this gestalt is wound so tightly that its
fingers
are turning blue
and threatening to drop to the floor with a whimper
where do they go from here? they are a part of me
and if i leave them here in this book i risk
exposing them, and forgetting them, at once
one of these can be validated

suitability

lately i've been relineated

you turned me around and put me in order (it was so easy for you)

but i had been looking at the ground so long that i don't recognize what i see

i don't know where to face

i know where you want me to face and it is a surprising comfort to acquiesce

when that comfort ceases to alarm me we will have a real problem but my real problem now

is that i have lost my way in favor of yours

for now i am face down on the ground with a stupid grin on my face

the gestalt is gone (for shame)

my edifice of economy is crumbling

with me inside and i don't want to leave

don't call masochism so soon

my reality was one that i made; it was real

now my reality is one that i share - it is irrefutable

my mind wanders then to the garden of earthly delights

to consider the difference between our own

i said i would never put text on my body, well

my garden is forest of those words anyway

you lost your use for eyes long ago

you lost your use for necessity, probably recently

why do you have use for this?

for me?

i can't make you answer that

i will keep all of these neuroses and faults from you and not out of secrecy

lately i was flying high on my spirit, my joie de vivre,

that i built out of the placenta of my rebirth

no, i must know your past before

i go here, shamelessly

you do so effortlessly and prove to me how

i have mistaken my identity

so i am reformed 

i am reformed from a villain, a criminal

hazardous

i don't have anything to hide but i wasn't ready to know that i'd encrypt it like this anyway

before, there was a mention of partition

to do something with the 90% of abandoned pink matter

it's your fault that i don't say grey matter anymore and these are all small differences

and i have made a lot of changes on my own

and i don't really believe that you'll be around forever

and i have to reconcile so much of what i don't believe about your spirit

and i can't change it but i have to try

and that is flaw, not simple fault

all of this gives me purpose but you sap my drive and i am apprehensive to receive your lesson

all this time i had been cleansing myself to be worthy 

of the divine, but i was never going to be worthy

that's not the point, i wanted to be worthy of its company

now i have yours and i am shook, you would say galvanized and i am confused

where do you derive this humility from, anyway?

i suppose i should consider your praise honestly

i didn't let you lecture - make you lecture - on pandora

how you could choose something so intriguing without bearing your psychology to me

that is the microcosm

if i am the box, (and you are most certainly pandora) i can't imagine what you are expecting

you know nothing of my reformation, and even prior,

i was but a malady, a pest

it wasn't filled with flies

did the fly bother you? did you laugh? i can't recall and

i realize there was an answer of sorts in that

you give away truths totally at random

you emit them as you do your body art

i have been grilling you and you are cooking just as you please

to my continued curiosity

what matters is this

you provide me so generously with wonder from your never ending supply

and i am grateful for that

and i want to see if you really see something in me

so i don't hang on too long

all of this is why i listen so intently
to let you teach me who i am

i feel in control in your absence
that is, the best attempt i can muster, at speaking to your presence
it isn't that i enjoy being a headless chicken
simply that i'm not very good at it
i mean, think about it

at least electrons have somewhere to go when they are excited
either I am meta stable
or there will be some lightshow when this resolves itself

there is something to the sensation of drifting towards becoming applied theory
that gives me guilt
that places it into my palm
i didn't know i would have to be
responsible for this

Egon Schiele had surprisingly few thoughts on the female form
or communicated them rather sparingly
I have even fewer
but want so desperately to commit them to medium
why

there is something to the idea of
insecure robots
or artificial intelligence
is acting robotic the null or the totality of narcissism?
this i must know before i report any more

listen:
i believe in your humanity, steadfastly
it is very convenient for me to leave any notions of
the rather cynical alternative
out of the question

this is becoming a repository for my future work
a place where i can put the real pithy stuff
the stuff i hate
it strikes me that this pivot strips this place of any beauty it once had
but at the same time, i never had any right to that beauty

read this like a child learning to skip

trees whistle in the middle of a forest fire
because they get bored
the heat has forced sound out of me
and cooked skin and meat
what does that make me
exotic
most of all i struggle with the lungs
i've got teeth made of graphite, mind you
what does that make the rest of me
something as gentle as the breeze, and a millenium could whittle me away
can the same be said of trees? they sing
my favorite song
a tree's favorite song
is maybe
the trickle of water through the pine needles

does that ever make me sick to my stomach
i want to wear dresses but don't like any of them
all the sewers hiss at me
i think it must be my silhouette
my silhouette is different to my shadow
i can't control my shadow but it is trapped to me
waxing and waning like everything else
when it is directly below me it is noon, and i am sheepish
for i am cold still, and have to think of my next meal
there is little time for romance in this preoccupied mind
at least not at noon, when the ground around my feet lay naked
by dinner i am chasing down every girl on the sidewalk to flirt
and my shadow is looking up her dress
i am giggling
i am retreating; i'm 21 but i feel 17 in some ways and for this i feel proud
i have come a long way since i was 17 years old and felt as mature as a dead man
how many times over have i been born since those days
since that day in winter when i reinvested in myself
every flower you grow is beautiful
now i give life to butterflies
i give thought to things
there is still this narcissism
but only two exist now: the I and the World

An Evolution of Aesthetic Esoterica

Today, art criticism may as well only exist as a tool of capitalism. That the most prevalent platitude of art criticism in everyday culture is a shocked “someone paid (x) for that?” gives an idea of the flippant attitude we as individuals adopt toward the taste of others. Formal criticism, then, acts as a redeeming defense of art. In an obsessively capitalist market, it is vital that the content of the piece reflects the ticketed price, and through this need authoritative reviews of artwork become as much evaluations as they are celebrations. This is a symptom of the problematic necessity for affirmation of taste, a condition stemming from the fallacy of art as content, having definable value and form.

Part of taste’s inherent difficulty is the ineffable nature of the essence of beauty. An ability to discern beauty implies a certainty of value, again quantifying - or at least qualifying - aesthetic principle. This mistakenly conflates the need for review with the totally unnecessary impulse for validation. Troublingly, art education can perpetuate and empower this self-serving process. The misunderstanding that art observation is applicable in more than a therapeutic and formative sense is the fault of consensus. Art does not evoke the same emotion from all that observe it, but the process of aggregating reactions in cases of wide exposure creates a popular opinion. Thus, we have “textbook” art - famous artwork that achieves pseudo-acclaim from its perseverance in culture. It is by this process that the ten “most famous” artworks may become the ten “greatest” artworks in an internet age.

Even with this in mind, such artwork is vital to art education in an economic sense as a review of effective techniques. Popular and enduring art offers clues to the elusive public eye that a commercial artist seeks. In this case, it is right to appease the idea of taste. Virtuous as it may be to remain impervious to outside criticism and influence, it is a luxury that cannot be afforded to any artist dependent on income from their work. So in this way, economic virtue can become a direct rival to artistic virtue.

Susan Sontag posited in her famous “Against Interpretation” essay that the process of critique is proof that intellectual virtue can be similarly destructive, and notices a troubling trend: “the contemporary zeal for the project of interpretation is often prompted not by piety toward the troublesome text (which may conceal an aggression), but by an open aggressiveness, an overt contempt for appearances.” (Sontag 4). It is worth noting the ignored hierarchy of criticism; during the act of critique, intellect is inherently more important than art, as the task of communicating ideas means it must be approached from the perspective of the intellect. She goes on. “The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one.” Even though Sontag says this cynically, some would attach enthusiastically to the process. Freudian analyses of latent content are common especially in literature, but have their place in art review - most notably tied to the work of Warhol and Basquiat.

Where Warhol and Basquiat encourage the investigation and interpretation of their art, however, many others do not. Basquiat’s art in particular was remarkable for his publishing of hidden, but core narrative within the larger piece. In cases where the artist doesn’t leave these meanings to be found, it is a game. Sontag gives this game a demerit: “It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” It is to turn the world into this world. (“This world”! As if there were any other.)”

How to approach art, then? Sontag’s assessment of contemporary zeal for interpretation seems to cynically suggest that we consume art unjustly, and selfishly. But Arnold Wirtala believes the solution to be treating art even more selfishly. “If people enjoyed their preferences in silence, without resources to communication, there would be no problem.”(Wirtala 118). Introverting the consumption of art returns the process to a more natural dynamic. Private observation of art eliminates the natural inclination to reach a consensus. “It is a characteristic of conversations about art that people try to reach agreements in their judgements of the worth of art objects” he says. When Wirtala involves worth, it may not mean the problematic monetization of art, but rather the therapeutic value. It is maybe even less reasonable, however, to crowdsource this value, and fruitless to seek it in the first place.

Any reached consensus represents an obvious insecurity on the part of those who seek it. Whatever value art may have to an individual (and despite the tone of this essay, it most certainly does offer value), there is none to be found in the evaluation of it. The art itself remains unchanged regardless of any particular understanding an audience may apply to it. Though it may take on different meanings, the need for a correct one is social, and not artistic. This insecurity is epitomic of the fight art faces in modern society. The appearance of economic, intellectual and social consensus in the process of consuming art shackles the beauty of the form and relegates it to commodity. It is a fitting paradox then that only in an environment that does not insist on justifying and evaluating art can art reach its full value.

Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. Farrar, Straus & Giroux,  New York, 1966.

Wirtala, Arnold. Taste in the Arts: a Problem of Aesthetic Value. Appearing in Volume 5, Issue 2 of Educational Theory, University of Illinois, 1955.

have discipline!
we are adversaries of all that is fickle

8th grade

there is only joy
there is only joy in this heart
i ferment it into jubilation
i ferment it into love
and i love you, and all
but what i do not see i cannot love
and so my heart tows me across the days
indiscriminately looking, and loving
until i have dark circles etched under my eyes
i am going away to find a bed for these eyes that my heart will be satisfied loving

jazz musicians celebrating improvisation like the dunk contest

basketball is jazz

the encouraging thing i discovered is that i have never always been something

i have never always been this bad at basketball

skuuuyyy

i took malcolm's hajj and did

what malcolm couldn't

relapsed

it takes so much discipline that believers must be gods themselves

i am sinning i am sinning you are heathens

i forgive you he forgives you what

will he do with me

i haven't written what is the summer essay

will it be world or us

much depends on this metaphor

battle hymn

is there a tree i can climb
this back is broken
in the sense that it isn't doing what it is meant to
lurching and springing is part of the ride
and it is ok in my solitude
where can we go where there is no need for
eloquence
i will make you king of this place
and find another for myself

it is hard to accept something so acerbic as a person into your own zen
you have to look for the creases with great care
and then fold them into the shape they should be
these days i get many sent to me by mistake
i do not have the time to fold them all and
nobody seems concerned by their absence
the clamor they make spins my head
and makes me second guess my self diagnoses

stockholm syndrome?
no, i am not that dramatic
i could leave this place
that i am so near to the top of maslow's pyramid gives me great comfort
and complacency as well
there are gardens here, too
instead, each day i slowly forget myself
piece by piece until i have some quiet
it is not every day that i achieve this
so i am trying to forget days

my only great concern is my own intuition
it is less sharp than it is incisive
sometimes i am too free with it and gouge holes into myself
all over my body
each of them heals differently
i waste my joie de vivre making sure they scar beautifully and
purposefully
purposefully
purposefully

herein lies my fight

snake

i was going down to the dirt river
with adam, and jesse, who was headed that way anyway to catch a fish or two
when i saw you swimming downstream like a bullet
straight for us
how did you get up river so quickly? school had only just let out
and nobody takes their motored boat out on the dirt river on account of that
cockeyed current and the poor visibility, least not with the water as low as it had been that summer
we all yelped and jumped in to catch you
didn't look surprised to see us, but didn't offer no thanks neither
you were still in your school shirt even, which is how i knew you hadn't ditched
when we stood you up and chewed you out you weren't perturbed in the least
just reached into your britches and then for jesse's hand
and closed it tight with a gold coin inside
that quieted adam, who gave you a sideways glance and held out his hand to yours
with which you produced the reddest brick of clay i reckon i've ever seen
all the while paying no mind to any of us, eyes fixed due north of jesse's collar
tracking something or other on the horizon, must have been all the way out near the riverbed
none of us seemed to think it right to follow your gaze
i was real nervous by now because i knew what was going on
but you let me off easy
bent your knees like a frog and took off right past us
i couldn't be too sure what i saw

you weren't in school that week or next
teacher had us write cards to your family and put up some signs
i sure did my best
all the while hoping that i was just wrong about that day
but i hope i never see you again
because if you spot me in that river i reckon you'll have no choice
that is, if you ever caught that big ole wooden vessel i thought i saw you take after
if you ever come hurtling down that dirt river i'll be taking off for good, mordecai
because i'm sure of what i heard
as you launched back into that zipline of a current
i'm certain you know my real name

Who Defeated Henry Dumas?

there is an ancient game of telephone
when men broach the topic of Henry Dumas they must
ejaculate, as solemnly as they may
"Henry Dumas was tragically killed in 1968 by a white New York City Transit Officer in a case of mistaken identity"
have you ever wondered about the most important lesson in the universe?
one so vital that you must take every precaution to ensure it is taught to all among us
mouths supposedly grow tired
but no mouths grow tired speaking of the passing of Henry Dumas
i don't suppose the death of Henry Dumas
is the most important lesson in world
and before the next mouth opens to explain to me
the tragedy of the murder of Henry Dumas
i hope that that mouth
considers what it supposes
to be so vital
that they must speak of his death
rather than what they think his afterlife is like