Telophase v2.0

This morning I went to a community arts meeting about a 3rd floor space downtown. The owner wants to convert it into a community gallery/studio/general arts space. 5 of us agreed to take on a lease and open the space, which will eventually grow to cover the entire floor as he knocks out walls, and turn it into studio space, a gallery, and a performance space. Like Telophase, it's a cross-genre multi-disciplinary collective. Only we'll call it something else. The beginning 5 are me (writing, bookmaking, installation), a photographer, a musician, a ceramics artist, and a printmaker.

We're pairing our first opening with the July downtown Arts Walk, which should bring thousands to the neighborhood.

Also I have a December solo show at a different gallery around the corner.

Not bad for two weeks in town.

The Artful Dodger Lives Again

Chicago people will know what I mean. Years after the one in Chicago was terminated, I discover a new one, much the same, except the beer is cheaper, in the wilds of Virginia. Granted, there are savages wandering by on the sidewalk in nomadic herds, but they're actually more docile than the average psychotic homeless person.

The difference between a nomadic savage and a homeless person is that the nomad is going somewhere.

My Cape, Let Me Show You It

So I've started riding my bike around town wearing a huge gray cape. It billows satisfyingly behind me. This is part of my plan to introduce myself to everyone as a Wizard. Part One of my plan was to make my wallpaper on my corporate computer a huge monster truck. Because everyone knows Wizards drive monster trucks. Stage Two was to start offering to wizard things for my coworkers. Here's a conversation I had today:

Colleague: Man, I need one of those hook things for my coat.
Me: I could wizard one for you.
Colleague: Really?
Me: Yeah. I don't make a big deal out of it, but I'm a wizard.
Colleague: Where's your wand?
Me: Druids use wands. I just wizard things.
Colleague: I didn't know wizard was a verb.
Me: I had to wizard it into verbness.
Colleague: Is verbness a word?
Me: It is now. It is now. That's pure wizardry, my friend.

I've also found that wizardry is a useful baseline for comparison to everything that happens in a tech company. Like:

IT Guy: OK, your access to the intranet should be set up.
Me: You didn't even touch my computer.
IT Guy: I did it remotely.
Me: Is that wizardry?
IT Guy: . . . sort of.

Stalking

I'd been planning on finding a normal-looking family--maybe headed by a Wal-Mart employee--and stalking them, photographing them and photoshopping myself into the photos and making an artist's book / photoalbum about "my" family and how much they love me. Writing elaborate stories about the time we went tubing or watched a NASCAR race together, all tragically heartfelt and more than a little pathetic in their eager earnestness.

The logistics are dragging me down.

Day Three

Everyone is married. It's apparently normal here. I think it has something to do with the baby jesus and the easter bunny. As far as I can tell, though, all that marriage just means that there's a lot of closeted swingers instead of people hunting one nighters solo.

They have children too. There's children everywhere.

Breeder's paradise. Or child abductor's paradise. Depending how you look at it. I should drop an anonymous tip to NAMBLA.

Everyone is also friendly, which is just fucking creepy.

That reminds me of a conversation I had with M about my ideal job. I briefly considered a full-time position "Spitting At People" but realized that it'd be hard to stay hydrated, so I switched my choice to astronaut. Because astronauts have water bags built into their space suits, so they don't get dehydrated, so they can spit at people all day long. Hydration is important.

Day Two

If I'm going to have to get a car, I'm going all the way. I've been shopping online for monster trucks and hearses. I figure a Monster Hearse would pretty much rule. Obviously, I'd rather just have the natives carry me around in litters (stripped to the waist and singing songs praising my most minor features), but the litters I've seen don't have all that much cargo space, which would make shopping tedious. I miss the El.

The weirdest thing about a small town is the idea that I'm going to see everyone I meet again. It still doesn't quite register. I'm going to have to stop threatening to fist people's sisters.

I Have A Superpower

My superpower is to be rude without even trying.

It must be a big-city small-town collision at work.

Last night, drunk as seven lords and all their dogs, I stopped at a wings place and had a PBR and some grease. Yokel #1 gave me a 2nd PRB instead of my check, and when I demanded that Yokel #2 both give me the check and take off the beer, he said "I don't appreciate you being rude and cussing me." I was shocked, since I'd been as diplomatic as possible. The only person I'd called an asshole wasn't even in the room, and I'd never really do anything so vile (or acrobatic) to his grandmother. So I said "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to be rude. I'm from Chicago. If I were trying to be rude, I'd pull my knife and say "I'll fucking cut you.' "

He seemed to understand, though you have to talk slowly and make big hand gestures to work out abstract concepts for the locals.

There Is A Place Called Wal-Mart

It is, apparently, where one must go for such sundry essentials as condoms, chewing gum, ammo, binoculars, and food. I hate it. It's full of fat people and there's no vegetarian burgers in the frozen food section. I have a feeling those two phenomena are connected.

The place crushed my spirit. Within ten minutes, I felt like the only point to my life was to kill myself slowly working 9-5 to make money to buy useless shit. I briefly contemplated making art or writing poems in the Wal-Mart, fighting back, camping out in sporting goods and writing sestinas. Then I realized that Wal-Mart would win, that the Wal-Marts of the world always win, that the creative spirit is easily crushed. And then I realized that the human spirit, generally, is a fragile and useless thing, that it's often shattered and never recovered, that there are millions of psychic zombies roaming places like Wal-Mart, stuffing their shopping carts with hot dogs and mayonnaise before vegetating as they passively absorb facile TV shows written by smug imbeciles.

So I put an extra bottle of wine in my cart.

First Meal

Tea House downtown decorated by the kind of person who admires Hemmingway. Or, more generally, the kind of person who is capable of authentically admiring anyone. Across the street is a "Taverina" full of barsluts and frat boys. I assume you're supposed to drink lots of tequila and assfuck the former and fistfight the latter.

The mango salad is unimaginative. I have grown too bored to eat it, despite my hunger.

Day One

The experiment shuddered to an inauspicious start. Last night--with all my shit loaded in a U-Haul and parked in a HoJo's lot halfway between Chicago and Harrisonburg--I got an email sent several hours after my departure saying that Human Resources had made a last minute change and reassigned my temp housing to a nice little house a little outside Harrisonburg. That would have been fine, except that I'd repeatedly told HR that I have a cat and no car, so I need to be able to bike to work from a pet-friendly apartment. Naturally, HR had reassigned me to a no-pets place so remote that it'd require a car. I was livid and, after several tall boys, called the HR lady's cell phone at an ungodly hour to threaten to burn her house down, trip her as she fled the inferno, and, while she was groggy and weak from smoke inhalation, wrench open her legs, rip off her panties, and spit in her pink spittoon with spittle so twistedly potent that she'd bear a litter of spider-eels that looked like me.

She called in the morning to say everything had been fixed.