Transformations

Should this become drunken post? I'm not really though...

3 days before departure from Sapporo to Tokyo and then back home.

Fully changed by experience here.

Trying to fend off overwhelming feeling of not being ready, not wanting to leave... with incantations, singing off key, self-affirmations.

Not just the place, but being in love with the person that I am here. I don't want to forget.

But there is alot of work to be done back home. Seeds planted need to be tended to. I know where I belong, where I'm needed. But I'm scared.

This place was good for me because I know the way things can and should be. The line where life and art meet is blurred, fluid. I am grateful.

Tomorrow never waits... even if you're not ready, it comes. Sun rises and you just deal.

I drank the Seven Seas*

...and some Club 99*

...and vodka

...and beer.

Oh yes, there was quite a bit of sorrow to drown. I did it with great dedication. But that's between me, the bottle(s) and the hills.

*these are Malaysian liquors well known for their... ahem, affordability, efficacy, and ability to induce a blindingly painful hangover. There's a reason why they're sold at Chinese medical halls throughout the country: cheap cure for misery, but apply with caution.

Happy thoughts

Because I'm stuck alone on a hill, feeling blue.

1. The sea
2. Boats
3. Tattoos
4. Bright stars
5. Clear nights
6. Dresses
7. Wine
8. Buying art
9. Literature
10. Miyazaki
11. Tophats
12. Breakfast
13. Walking
14. New languages
15. Galapagos
16. Mexico
17. Argentina
18. Portugal
19. Make-up
20. Dancing
21. Poop
22. Z. + Bunny
22. Aubrey & Maturin
23. Sex
24. Bach
25. Dan Savage
26. Friends, old and new
27. Graphic novels
28. Bikinis
29. Glass jars
30. Sydney
31. The moon
32. Whiskey, expensive or cheap
33. Gardens
34. Coconuts, trees and to eat
36. Herbs
39. Jacques Pepin
40. Panthers
41. Rivers
42. Antares
43. Color pencils
44. Perfume
45. Sleep, after a long day
46. Honey
47. Cloth bags
48. Massage
49. Rubber bouncy balls
50. Ur-Quan Masters!

Ooo. It worked. Back to work. Laters.

Thoughts on the weather

As I was saying to G., it's like the weather is the 3rd artist in residence up here at Balik Pulau. Storms, floods, mini landslides, blackouts, rising damp, puddles, showers, gentle rains, winds, sun, high humidity, a million stars in the cloudless night sky - we have seen it all with the promise of more to come. And right now? It's a wondrous day. Laundry day. Sit back day. Sex in the afternoon day. It will bring on an evening that aches on into night, because the day doesn't want to say goodbye.

I have no notions of my purpose up here, still floating from one day to the next, sitting and waiting. The only thing I am sure of is the experiencing of uncertainty. Uncertainty is not to be confused with timidity or sloth...

My thought petered out there, just as I was dwelling on the irony of wanting to speak resolutely of uncertainty. Who knows what it is. It is not a thing (an attribute) but a state (a condition). No knowledge or determination of will has helped me to overcome uncertainty. Believe me when I say this has proved profoundly frustrating.

The only way that helps me think about it is the weather. I wake up every morning trying to read myself like I read the clouds in the sky - will it be rain? Will it storm? The weather is making me realize what to do: arm yourself with knowledge and an inkling, be prepared for anything, have the right tools, keep watch... and just... submit.

Music in my head

The opening of the Cello Suite No.3 from the manuscript of Anna Magdalena Bach, dated 1730.

As I limp along making work for this exhibition, the thought has grown in my mind that I no longer want to make art for awhile. Perhaps a year, maybe even more. At first I dismissed it as the usual stressed-artist hyperbole. When it didn't go away, I became very anxious, started feeling sick in the head - short and sharp attacks of chronic paranoia, unhappiness and panic. My instinct was to push harder and harder to try and reach a breakthrough on the other side - it's always worked before. I guess I did breakthrough, but unlike before, what I've found on the other side... is nothing. I feel a bit of shock, yet now I've really accepted it I feel a little calmer.

It's not something a holiday can fix, or even a fully paid- up residency, or a huge-ass commission. If I was invited to Venice today (haha, yeah, preposterous notion, but what the hell), I tell you honestly I'd feel no joy, only anxiety. But M.S. has asked me to collaborate with him at Asiatopia later in the year, and I feel quite happy about that. I've decided that I must try not to do too many things that cause me to feel anxious, or at some point I may find myself only ever acting out of fear for my career... Now, that's a far smaller life than I ever dreamed for myself.

Go to the places that feed you, not take things from you.

I was going to tell you about Bach's Cello Suites. I've been listening to it while I work and it's like having a friend who understands you and is uplifting you all at once! Cellos have a great old noble sound. I did have a night of great sex to the Cello Suites... so remembered warmth probably has alot to do with it. I highly recommend it. (The sex, and the music, and especially, both together)

My first year in fear

You have to understand that suffering does not make better art. Suffering - whether physical or mental pain - makes work difficult or impossible. I hate to spend any more time on suffering than what it already takes up - I hate to write or talk or make art about it.

What makes better art? Not talent. Talent makes good (great) art possible. Practice makes better art. In fact, when it comes to art, maybe even life, I think stubbornness trumps talent every time.

-

I remember I used to approach things with a sort of fearlessness. I have a Christian Boltanski quote about artist fear: 'I'm always a beginner, and the most important thing is always the next piece. We artists never know if we can do it again. You have done something - and most of the time I hate what I have done a few years ago - and you don't know if you can do something now. The good artists are usually the very young or the very old. The ones who are very young are so stupid that they have no fear. And when they are very old they aren't afraid any more. In the meantime, you are always, always, afraid.'

The thing about fearlessness is that you're not being particularly brave, it's just that it never occurs to you that you'll never NOT be able to make anything. Until recently, I thought I could go on producing things forever until the day I died - at a pace only hampered by physical limitations. I'd get tired - of myself, of what I did - but never scared.

This is my first year living with fear. It's like going to sleep in your own bed and waking up in someone else's house where everything feels strange and unsure. I remember meeting A.C. for the first time on the steps of a gallery I used to work in. I'd heard all about him - talented, sensitive, success at a young age - and then, a breakdown. We didn't speak for very long, but I really liked his eyes, even though they looked a bit wild.

When you go over the edge, you're never the same again. You can recover, maybe become older and wiser, but you can't go back to who you were. Sometimes you regret it terribly, because it's all you want to do - to go back and begin again before all that wasted time and energy. But I've met some people who come back and they live in their own skin again, whole and complete. There's never a guarantee.

Whatever it is, you have to try and make sure that you don't let yourself go over the edge, ok?

Medley

Haven't felt like posting here too much lately. Lots of shit going down in my universe; it's a regular cosmic storm and I'm waiting for the planets to align themselves again. A few fleeting impressions:

The weather has been unaccountably pleasant recently. Someone attributed it to less drivers on the road due to the recent fuel price hike. Oh B., love your optimism darling, but it will take more than a few lousy Ringgit to prise Malaysians away from their vehicles of mass destruction (I know because I'm one of them). So I have been waking up to balmy, windy mornings and watching pretty evenings dissolve into night. It's lovely, but I've always found that good weather mocks my less than happy disposition.

'If you know about life, you hang on tight and don't let go'. Can't remember where I read that, but it's stuck somehow.

The wonderful Edward Winkleman has posted about confronting that squirm-in-your-pants awkward can't-remember-your-name situation. It is so nice to and reassuring to know that even seasoned, suave gallerists are human too! The sweetest part is that his partner Bambino jumps in to save him when he notices that Ed is in trouble! Yes, having a partner like that puts social faux pas into perspective - what's a little embarrassment when you know someone's always got your back.

'And he knew he would love her until the very last syllable of recorded time'. '...the very last syllable of recorded time' - in the whole of Patrick O'Brian's 16 volume opus I think that phrase stands out as a true gem. What does 'forever' mean to you?

I have a theory. Here it is: that people who come from broken families have very intense and skewed views on love and life. In my experience, I can tell pretty much instantly if someone is like me. They're often likeable, proud, willing to please, secretive and stubborn. Sometimes things like trust and loyalty feel like a matter of life and death to me, and there are subtle divisions and demarcations of honour and love that seem to be of such inflated importance as to seem pathological. As the years go by, you realize your parents are only human - flawed beings who did the best they could from what they had. From there, you have to decide to move on, or perpetuate destructive cycles which go back only Buddha knows how long. Sometimes you swing so wildly in the opposite direction - you want to try so very hard to overcome some perceived flaw or wrong, to convince yourself you are not, will not, will never be like them. If you are beautiful, if you are intelligent, successful, charming and friendly and loyal and nice then perhaps you can make it better. But no, only love can make whole the various hurts that the absence of love has caused. Unfortunately people who are unhappy never believe they deserve anything they haven't worked hard for.

So go give any control freaks you know a hug today. It's only a defense mechanism, they often can't help it.

That's why I love my work so much, too much. Because it loves me back exactly the same amount. It is mathematical, reliable 'until the very last syllable of recorded time'. So much of my ego is invested in it, that when I can't work I feel like I am dying.

I remember something D. said to me once: 'It's not your fault'. Devastated, there was only one other conclusion for me: 'Then it must be yours'.

Ah, hmmm. Anyways.

Independence

Today filled me up
like a full river
lying in a cup that's too small

Tonight is a hollow boat
on a trickling stream
far from the sea

Too much
Not enough

-

Some nights the tattoo on my back tingles and burns - it wants to tear itself off the skin with longing for a horizon line. Here in my room in my house in my housing estate with the view of the neighbours opposite, and the apartments beyond that, and the telephone towers beyond that, and the dirty night beyond that, and the stars that hang in it, winking and teasing. Love is in the rooms, sleeping in the beds, cooking in the kitchen. But the sea and the stars, the moon, the great big world calling: books are not enough, love is not enough. Home is not enough. Home is my warm stomach, my dying pet, waking up in the morning to find yourself planted with the roots of a tree - demanding love, trust, time, effort. Home is too much.

I feel like a box with a curse inside it, and a picture of a ship drawn on the lid like a magic seal. I look at it looking out at the world - both cure and disease.

I wonder about my mysterious grandmother. Maybe it's her living inside me.

Ghosts II

You must be feeling the way I'm feeling
Cos' I haven't thought about you in a long time
You must be crying the way I'm crying
Cos' I haven't cried about you in a long time

I don't know, someone else can write the verses. All I want to do is lie here and think mean things.

Yin thoughts

Am I the only one who thinks Britney's 'Piece of Me' is a really good song?

-

Frank Lloyd Wright's Monument to Haroun Al-Rashid

Caliph Haroun Al Rashid used to walk the streets of ancient Baghdad disguised as an ordinary citizen. I want to do that. I want to walk without fear in every corner of my city, not scared of murderers or rapists or drug dealers. Maybe if you're not afraid of being hurt, mentally or physically, then nothing will happen to you. Sometimes I think there are two mes in this body. One is completely crazy and reckless, I'll do anything it takes for anything or just for a thrill, I swear. Even if you're close to me, you don't now how close I am to this crazy person inside me. The only thing that holds me back is that I actually care about people. Maybe when I do crazy things it hurts others because they thought they knew you well. That's why disguise, fantasy and make-believe is necessary. I really wonder how much violence I am capable of. I don't like killing insects, but that's because of my Buddhist upbringing. I swear, it's because of Buddhism that I am better equipped to deal with the... utter solidity of reality. It's more violence of emotions that I'm thinking of. I don't want to be violent towards life or people, I don't have those kinds of kinks, but I do want to do things that are very irrational. I once told someone, who told me I was beautiful and asked me if I was a model, that I was a prostitute, just for the fun of it. He wasn't amused and walked away in disgust. Hey, that's too bad, I just wanted to play, you know? I get really disappointed when people don't get a proposed game. But then some sick people don't understand that it's only a game. Hmm. You can't have it both ways, Betta, people tell me. But fuck that. I think that you can have it this way, that way, or any fucking way you want if that's what turns you on. 'This world... is solid through and through', I remember that from a movie I watched. Sometimes I feel like I am drugged, how calm and rational I get is only a measure of a huge sea inside me that is pushing and pulling in all directions like a big storm breaking. You could probably label me 'the one most likely to run away and join the circus'. But I was born into a newer world, freaks have 'scenes' now, you know! I hate all scenes. I like freaks, real freaks. And there aren't anymore circuses... if you want you have to invent your own. You know why I like Miyazaki's films so much, because you can sort of tell that they are just like, 10 percent of this person's vast inner world that's filled with monsters, treasure, freaks, pain and pleasure. I don't have a problem being alone or being ignored at all, I can constantly amuse myself. I am not afraid of dying. Something in the world is getting darker - more lies and pain. Really sick kind of pain - torture, imprisonment. I think people just don't know what to do with themselves. Their imaginations are dead.

-

La Luna chair by Kenneth Cobonpue

The moon. La luna... she knows me, doesn't she.

Self-medication

The Steve Smith I'd like to buy (if it wasn't already sold):

Song Writing
Steve Smith, 2003
Oil on Canvas, 32 x 27cm
(from Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney)

The Steve Smith I plan to buy (see the observatory in the background?):

The Second Coming (Pat. Pend.)
Steve Smith, 2003
oil on canvas, 51 x 41 cm
(from Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney)

Moody bitch

I hate that fucking tag function on Myface. I know privacy is an illusion, but I need my fragile fictions to keep me going.

You know what there's no longer enough of in the world? Mystery.

Bleh. I have a thousand damn things to do. I'm getting a scotch to kill this damn cough.

Yearrrrrggghhhhhh

Random virtual outburst. Stress gila. Deadlines deadlines. Gotta get them balls painted and a bad kink has mysteriously appeared in my right shoulder blade. I forgot what a godawful long process it was to get them made. Don't use your hands for 5 months and this is what happens. Pffft. Poo. Lalalalala. Ok nicotine time, baibai bitches.

Ah but then II

Thoroughly dissatisfied after going to two openings yesterday. Maybe because there was no booze at either one. My bitching (remarkably consistent; one might even say tediously repetitive, if you were feeling ungenerous) in chronological order:

Betta: I know it's a new Malaysia, but the art is the same.
H: You need to give it time.
Betta: I want it NOW.
H: Well you can't have it now.
Betta: Feh.

Betta: I know it's a new Malaysia, but the art is the same.
Z: Art is irrelevant, you're in the wrong profession
Betta: I know, I would have made millions selling my body. Dammit.
Z: You sound really confident about that.
(Betta *unsaid, but certainly thought at the time*: shouldn't I be..?)

Betta: I know it's a new Malaysia, but the art is the same.
L: Hahahhahahh. heeh.

Unlocking

These lines were written by someone in prison:

Part of you may live alone inside,
like a tone at the bottom of a well.
But the other part
must be so caught up
in the flurry of the world
that you shiver there inside
when outside, at forty days' distance, a leaf moves.

and so were these:

To think of roses and gardens inside is bad,
to think of seas and mountains is good.
Read and write without rest,
and I also advise weaving
and making mirrors.

Advice from someone who knew all about passing time and being locked up. I'm listening, Nazim; I'm listening, listening. And this freedom tastes sweet in my mouth - to be enjoyed now, tonight even. Free, for example, to stay one step ahead of sleep, to look out and see the moon above the roofs of houses, to add a few more words to this night before the sun comes up. Free to imagine no prisons, ever, concrete ones, yes, but especially those that aren't.

Death

Whenever I feel bad, I always think of Mishima:

'At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it.'

Did you know his favorite author was Thomas Mann? Incidentally, Thomas Mann was quite glowing about Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game, a book I have attempted to read three times. In vain. This failure annoys me beyond anything. I tell myself I am not ready. Just as I'm not ready for Virginia Woolf, except maybe Orlando, and that because of Tilda Swinton and because Borges describes it as 'sparkling'.

Mishima. Never before and never again will there ever be words as elegantly violent. Here was someone who really understood cruelty - cruel love, cruel beauty, cruel silence; even how art can be cruel, un-redemptive. After watching the biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, I was devastated for days. Even now, this pathetic hollowness I find myself in recalls the profound abyss of his work and his life - calls like a false note to his true one. He wrote so beautifully, with such feeling for the sensual world. I think at heart he was a gentle person. It might have been a different life and a different art in another time, or place. But it's lesser artists like me who ever have those kinds of thoughts - always thinking elsewhere, never looking at things where and how they are.

That's why I think about Mishima. He tempers these ridiculous vapours of mine into something sharp, like steel:

'Animals don't need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable. But human beings do need something, and with knowledge they can make the very intorelableness of life a weapon, though at the same time that intorelableness is not reduced in the slightest. That's all there is to it.'

First look, the sea, comfort

In the year one, our tutor brought us to an exhibition. I can't remember the title, but there was this phrase somewhere: 'White is the colour of pain', or maybe it was 'The colour of pain is white'. I remember the artist's name as if I was there now - Mladen Stilinovic.

It was the first exhibition where I really learned to look. I could have picked a far worse place to start. I remember his whites had hues and textures that I had never imagined. I remember the freshness of my own gaze; not knowing anything about art. I realize I'll never look at anything that way again. Knowledge, once acquired, only deepens. But I remember what it feels like. An exciting, private, almost erotic awakening... and I can picture the creamy light of the gallery on that day, years ago.

I have never been able to capture in my own work even a shade of that heightened experience. Attached to a tactile and sensual world, I still like things too pretty.

Sometimes you may have read a passage by a writer you think is excellent, and you realize that not one word or sentence in there is superfluous. The best of anything is like that - no sleight of hand.

---

I've been waiting for an image to get clearer and clearer for a show in August. It's been brewing at the back of my head. Circles, from a fixed point.

The bottom of the sea is death, the surface, life.

---

Behold the sad lil puppy
Pining away for the sea
It should have been born
With gills and flippers on
But twas not to be

-E.H.

Self-medication

drinking
bathing
smoking
waiting
working
waiting
reading
drinking
waiting

'like looking up suddenly from here
to impossible stars fading'

'and you put one word in your left shoe,
and one in your right, and you go walking'

'Things I never knew I loved'
'I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a bird'

waiting

'and where you live is where you'll be buried
and when you dream it's where you were born'

'My need to transform reality was a necessity, as important as three meals a day or sleep'

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters was directed by Paul Schrader

'The trouble with Malaysia is that we don't act like we have that kind of power'

waiting

'and here I've loved rivers all the time
motionless like....' *can't remember

'and I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see'

'his poetry like a compass, traced circles, some intimate, some wide and global, with only the sharp point inserted in the prison cell'

'There are seven levels of despair - one for every day of the week.'

'I just remembered the stars
I love them too'

'Stack in me the unaccountable fire'

'In the city in which I love you
no one comes to meet me'

'Make my various names flock overhead
I will follow you'

'I didn't know i liked rain'...*something something...
*can't remember

I'm still waiting. Perhaps if I move around from one place to another in my house it will be better. I can take a walk around my housing estate. I can read Castle Waiting which I really seemed to like last night.

Nobody's fault.

On pathetic individuality

I like to be aloof. Aesthetically, if you put something ugly next to something beautiful, it makes the beautiful thing appear more so. This constant interplay between ugly and beautiful creates a challenging, complex thing to look at. Lately, even when I'm alone I want to be elusive and aloof, even when there's no one looking. It must be because I'm utterly, utterly bored. Imagine, self-perpetuating versions of yourself as a diversion from this crushing, soul-defeating, consumerist life. It's so self-indulgent it's disgusting. That's why I love the sea so much, because it puts you in your place. There will never be anything more beautiful and savage and mercurial than the sea, no, least of all me. It is devastatingly humbling. The only other thing that compares is friendship, and other bonds of love. I don't mean the coy little games or stupid dependencies or associations of convenience - actual friendship, and loyalty. When I experience this (manifest as straightforwardness, kindness, regard), there is no need to constantly reinvent and maintain my pathetic individuality.

Black holes

I may get some new ink to pull me out of this hole.

Two nautical stars, but one now and the other when the task is done.

Woke up feeling bad enough to pick up the phone and make an appointment, but no, Betta, no! First rule of good tattoos - wait wait wait. We'll see if I still want it tomorrow.