Polyestra

The Curator oversees the acquisitions of new works, takes responsibility for the maintenance of the museum’s holdings, and carefully sculpts the museum’s future with her vision of where Art Is Going. If, as a practical matter, The Curator spends most of her energy enhancing her reputation among the cosmopolitan museum set -- well, so much the better! After all, you don’t expect her to stick around this hick town for long, do you?

Athena  The Curator works hard to stand for the art community the way Athena symbolized Athens. Like the Greek goddess, The Curator always strives to be magnificent, noble, and austerely stylish.

Simone de Beauvoir  Feminist, philosopher, bohemian, and scarf-wearing lover of Sartre, de Beauvoir showed The Curator that a woman could have brains, panache, and significance. The Curator finds it curiously arousing that such a proud woman could also have abased herself so thoroughly in the service of her mentor.

Andy Warhol  He achieved artistic fame by mixing up the low and the high. He was a master manipulator. And, let’s face it, The Curator would rather be a creative person than a bureaucrat anyway. Who wouldn’t?

WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 11:23 AM
My boss Ellen yells at me for making a mess of her afternoon schedule. Why can’t she understand how hard it is for me to juggle the seven boring jobs it takes to support myself?

Living in Manhattan as the last artist in New York City: it’s the ultimate test of commitment.


WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 11:25
Ellen rushes out to show Dubai clients condo in a just-completed building designed by protegee of Zaha Hadid. Rest of country may be endless series of popping real-estate bubbles, but after minor bump, prices in NYC are soaring again.

Not a fan of the zigzaggy neo-Hadid tower myself, which was built on the site of the Chelsea Hotel. In fact, I picketed the site for two days with a sign that read “What about our cultural heritage?”

“Who cares?” muttered families as they shoved me to the side.

Gaze thoughtfully out window: Tribeca is now block after block of biomorphing blue glass.


WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 11:35 AM
Take advantage of Ellen’s absence to fly through email accounts and social-networking sites. Vidmsg catches my attention:

    From: ksymonds[@]nytimesonline.com
    Subject line: Interview Request

Fingers shake as I call it up.  Has my moment finally come?

In Quicktime window: Red-haired and vivacious, she intros self as Kaci Symonds, proposes doing f-to-f Friday at 11 AM. Goal: interactive multimedia piece about me as last remaining artist in New York City. “You’re a cultural landmark!” says Kaci. “You’re it!”

Finally: recognition I deserve. So what if Times is minor fish in Facebook-Twitter media pond?

WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 11:45 AM
Need to shake my office funk. Put “I’m sick” note on Ellen’s chair, get on Segway, cruise fabled SoHo neighborhood.

Hard to believe that SoHo streets were once cobblestone. Ah, for the era before the “NYC Is For Families” lobby came to dominate politics. Parents complained to city that cobblestones trapped designer stroller wheels, and the mayor caved.

The air is full of the spirits of the great New York artists I grew up revering: Schnabel, Fischl, Sherman. All have long since relocated, complaining that N.Y. C. is antagonistic to the arts-life. But they’re of advanced age and have long since earned their place on art-history websites, so deserve to be cut some slack.

Some artist in the younger generation has to make a stand for the New York City tradition. That’s me.

WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 12:15 PM
Needing a boost, I pause at Khirgiztani deli to pick up a Smart Red Bull latte. So weird that Koreans have moved on from the deli field, but I guess investing their money in selloffs from GM breakup is working out well for them.

“You OK?” the mustachio’d guy handing me the Red Bull latte asks. I sniffle, wave him off, and scoot on my way.

WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 1:07 PM
Ruminative moment indulged, I return to my obligations. Roar up Park Ave. to next job, this one at Frank Gehry School for the Developmentally Gifted on Upper East Side. Tears flow as I review countless sacrifices I’ve made to live as an artist in New York City.

WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 1:09 PM
At a red light in the 40s, I whip out my iConnect and compose vidmsg about NYT/online’s interest to my former partners in Polyamory Art Collective.

Though breakup five years ago when PAC buddies relocated to Metuchen still rankles, I can’t imagine they won’t be happy for me. Or jealous (even better!). Wasn’t supposed to fixate on one person in polyamory group. I know, I know. But trad-style possessiveness about Xavier overwhelmed me.

Nearly get knocked off Segway by turbocharged Hummer-Prius hybrid as I daydream about Xavier’s schlong piercings, but recover in time to hit “send” button and continue uptown.

WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 2:49 PM
So much happier since I persuaded the principal to let me replace Introductory Art History with Art as Recession Investment Strategy instead. Finally students are interested. Hope the brats don’t discover that I lost my own sorry $500 worth of savings back when FannieMae collapsed!

Only glitch in today’s class occurs when I mention the Times’ interest in me and my work.

TALL BRAT: “The Times? What’s that?”

ME: “An online news source. Once it was what we called ‘a major newspaper,’ and it symbolized New York City and its great cultural life.”

SHORT BRAT: “Losing strategy. You should be targeting CollegeHumor.com instead.”

Kids high-five each other. When will I learn?

WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 3:33 PM
A thin pale girl named Kendyl approaches me in the hallway.

KENDYL: “Sorry about my idiot classmates. They wouldn’t recognize real creativity if it kicked them in the portfolio. Can I show you something?”

I nod. She flips on her iConnect and, blushing with pride, shows me a karaoke-mashup she’s created. In it, Flash representations of Schnabel, Fischl, and Sherman mouth the lyrics to “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.” Tears of delight run from my eyes and I give Kendyl a hug. So there is hope for our city’s cultural future!

About to tell Kendyl to remember to credit original artists when I recall with a start that copyright law was  abolished last year.


WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 4:23 PM
Segway thoughtfully along beloved home block, once known as East 2nd St., then named after Joey Ramone, now called Richard Meier Blvd. Proud to inhabit last remaining walk-up on street of bulbous, zigzagging towers.

iConnect beeps. Vidmsg is from Eden, former rival in Polyamory Art Collective. She’s wearing nothing but hand-crafted nipple rings. Other collective members are visible in the background, hogtied and dangling from the ceiling. Always hard to tell whether PAC is preparing an art event or having an orgy.

EDEN: “Wow, we’re so happy about the upcoming profile. We’d come help you celebrate only we don’t do New York City any longer. A tip, honey? Today’s real artists don’t even know how to find Manhattan.”

Unsure how to gauge Eden’s tone. Sarcasm-irony with hint of mock naivete? Feel like I’ve lost touch with artworld attitudes.


WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 4:27 PM
Proud to live in walk-up.

As I reach my landing, elderly neighbor in yoga pants and Namaste t-shirt begins her usual harangue: “I hear the landlord is selling this building. Time for the sons of bitches to build another flakey high-rise. Did I ever tell you about the glory days of rent control? I did? Well, so long as Social Security doesn’t go under ...”

Make face at played-out Boomer and hurry into my apartment.

WED. MARCH 22ND, 2014, 4:35 PM
Collapse on bed, stare at ceiling, and try to recall my most recent Mission Statement. I can recall using the words “issues,” “concerns,” “signify,” and “mimicking” and “layering.” What on earth was I talking about?

Decide to attempt masturbation. Drag old vidmsg from Collective out of special folder, replay that part I like so much showing Xavier wiring that pixie mischief maker Sasha to erotic electroshocker. As ever, delicious feelings of jealousy and possessiveness surge forth. Reach for beloved iPhallus and switch it on. Talk about user-friendly! Take comfort in fact that Apple hasn’t lost design touch despite merger with Microsoft.

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, 12:04 AM
Turn to task of organizing my recent work. Eek, not a lot there!

I’ve been so busy  maintaining life in New York that I haven’t gotten much art done. None, really.

Zero.

Nada.

What will I  have to show when I meet with Kaci?

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, 7:40 AM
Call in sick to three Thursday jobs.

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, 11:20 AM
Thoughts racing from too much caffeine and scattered from too many vitamins. I’m starting to see artistic possibilities in ever-longer line of empty Smart Red Bull cans.

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, 3:03 PM
Devastated! Vidmsg just arrived from Kaci telling me piece is off. Editor has opted to use precious online space to profile latest in Trump developer-dynasty instead of me. Twelve years old! They get started early these days.

So it has come to this ...

Send weepy mass vidmsg to all 518 people on my Friends list. Sometimes emotions are so overwhelming they need to be shared.

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, 4:35 PM
Response arrives from Polyamory Art Collective.

Subject line: Condolences on your disaster

Attached is an invitation to an event tonight in Metuchen. Sympathy or irony? As ever, hard to tell what’s intended. Feel intense need to reconnect in any case.

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, 9:58 PM
Metuchen is a long drive by Segway!

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, 10:22 PM
Xavier meets me at entrance to Woodbridge Center Mall. We share a kiss. But is anything still there between us? Uncertain but hopeful.

Xavier pushes open entry doors. Never been so amazed in my life! Where are the soccer moms and the mallwalking cottontops? Place is seedy, falling apart. Panhandling kids with spikey hair congregate at every sputtering fountain. Store windows feature ripped fishnets and bongs. It’s like the photographs I’ve seen on historical-NY websites of St. Marks Place in its glory days. How can one mall support so many comic book stores?

ME: “What happened to all the Target, Sephora and J. Crew outlets?”

XAVIER: “It’s about RSF, baby.”

ME: “What’s RSF?

XAVIER: “Reverse Suburban Flight. All the families have escaped the decay in the ‘burbs and moved to Manhattan where the shopping is safe and the movies are PG-13.”

Smell of sweaty leather and stale pot is making my creative juices surge. Xavier’s tattooed torso is doing its part too.

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, 10:31 PM
Clinging to Xavier’s arm, hoping he’s feeling what I’m feeling, we approach the end of a long, garbage-strewn hallway.

“Why are we coming here?” I ask in disappointment. “Isn’t this a WalMart?”

“A few things have changed since you were here last,” says Xavier.

He pushes me through immense doors into warehouse space. Colored lights. Deafening music. Throbbing hipster mob.

“Welcome to The Big Box, baby,” says Xavier.

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, LATE
Rebounding from despair! Tape on too many skin patches, dance with too much abandon to retro cyber-Hindu tribal-pulse.

Entire evening turns out to be Polyamory Art Collective dance-event-performance. Envy would bring out the bitch in me if I weren’t so high and dancing so hard.

THURS. MARCH 23RD, 2014, LATER
Spend an hour in the Big Box’s VIP lounge. Nice to kiss girls and let breasts spill out again. Brings back my years in art school.

FRIDAY, MARCH 24TH, 2014, SOMEWHERE AROUND 3 A.M.
Exploring the larger space, I round a corner to discover Xavier whipping a tied-up Eden in front of a cheering crowd and multiple video-performance webcams.

The time has clearly come for me to make my move. I step up to Xavier and, just as he’s in mid-stroke, interrupt him and take off my top. He looks at me with special eyes and, like that, we sink into a big kiss. Eden glares at us over her shoulder.

As Xavier and I unclench he says to me in a voice hoarse with emotion, “Baby, there’ll never be anyone like you. You know that, I know that. What goes on between us can’t be matched. But I’m like you, baby. Like you, I’m a committed artist, and my commitment is to my art. And my art is polyamorous.”

FRI. MARCH 24TH, 2014, GOD ONLY KNOWS WHEN
Whirling by myself, enveloped in color, beats, and sweaty, attractive people.


FRI. MARCH 24TH, 2014, PROBABLY AROUND 5 AM
A flash of light, then another, startles me out of my blissful throbbing state. I realize that I’ve been dancing by myself on a tabletop. As the flash continues to go off, I start to recognize the face behind the camera that’s pointing up my legs. It’s Kaci Symonds.

KACI: “I never thought I’d run into you of all people out here! You, the last of the Manhattan die-hards!”

ME: “Since when has The Times run scandalous party pix?”

KACI: “Oh, I quit them in disgust this afternoon. I’m with CollegeHumor.com now.”

ME: “I’m so sorry.”

KACI: “Are you kidding? Don’t let this get out, but CollegeHumor is acquiring The Times next month anyway.”

Screw it. If I’m going to be here at all I should keep dancing.  Dammit, dance!

I give over to the wild spirit around me. I pour vodka into my Red Bull. In the ladies’ room tape on smart-drug skin patches.

Maybe I do need to throw aside my dreams. Maybe it’s time to move to Jersey.

The stall door swings open. It’s Xavier. He glares at me.  

“Fuck polyamory,”  I mouth at him.

Ten minutes later I’m leaning against a wall. Groups of  people, anyone passing by -- they’re all writing on my legs, my back, my arms.

I’m being inscribed.

FRI. MAR. 24TH, 2014, 6:32 AM
I’m shivering in the parking lot outside the Woodbridge Center Mall. Exhausted, but seeing the world in a whole new light, I hand a dollar to a panhandling kid smoking by my Segway.

“Omigod!,” the girl blurts, and moves to get away.

I put a hand on her shoulder and look at her closely. It’s Kendyl, the pale thin girl from my class at Frank Gehry High. She wears too much black makeup, a ripped plaid mini skirt, a see-through bra top, and romper stomper boots.

KENDYL: “Please don’t tell me parents you saw me in Metuchen!!”

ME: “What are you doing here? How’d you even know about this scene?”

KENDYL: “Everybody knows that The Woodbridge is where it’s happening.”

ME: “But you’re only 15.”

KENDYL: “I told my parents I was going to a slumber party at a girlfriend’s in the West Eighties. I changed into these clothes in the Metuchen Greyhound stop. You aren’t going to bust me, are you?”

I motion for Kendyl to join me on my Segway.

FRI. MAR. 24TH, 2014, 7:57 AM
Kendyl holds me tight as we roar through Lincoln Tunnel and into midtown. The city is mobbed with busy, sleek people carrying attache cases and pushing strollers.

“God, it’s so depressing to have to live in the city,” Kendyl calls into my ear. “How can anyone face a life that’s so boring?”

“Even squares deserve someplace to live,” I call back to her.

We pull up before the vertigo-inducing split-and-torqued bluegreen 50 story apartment building where she lives with her parents on E. 64th.

Kendyl is looking at me with emotional eyes.

“It’s OK, Kendyl, you’re home, and I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“You don’t understand!” she blurts.

“What do you mean?”

She throws herself into my arms. “You’re my hero. My role model. You’re everything I want to be.”

“But sweetie, I haven’t even been able to find time for my own art in years.”

“Why can’t you get it?”

“Get what?”

“Don’t you remember when you talked to us about performance art?” she asks.

“You were listening?”

“That’s you! That’s it. It’s the very fact that you’re here in New York City at all as an artist that is your performance art masterpiece!”

She kisses me on the cheek and runs towards the building's entrance. Pausing by the door she cries out, “And that’s exactly what I’m going to write on my blog today! And my site gets tons of hits!”

FRI. MAR. 24TH, 2014, 8:37 AM
Cruising back onto Richard Meier Blvd and climbing the stairs to my tiny apartment, I find myself relieved. So the profile in the Times didn’t work out. I’m going to get praised on a young girl’s popular blog. Perhaps I won’t achieve art immortality, but I just might go viral.

Three weeks after my daughter had started first grade, we received a letter in the mail with her English-as-a-Second-Language test results: she had scored the lowest possible assessment: Tier A – described as “appropriate for language learners who have arrived in the U.S. this academic school year without previous instruction in English.” I didn’t know she had been tested. I didn’t even realize Dina wasn’t considered a native speaker of English. She has lived in the US since she was one year old and there is no language she speaks more fluently than English.

“Going to work” was one of the first status updates I read after I joined Facebook. At the time, I was naïve about the nature of Facebook communication, so I immediately wondered if this friend had been previously out of work and, if so, why. Had he been laid-off or fired? Had he been sick or injured on the job? Of course, he could have just changed jobs, but the lack of punctuation in the update made me think, for no real reason, of the doldrums of a familiar workplace, the type of place that becomes so repetitive that the lack of punctuation was a metaphor for how he saw his job: endless. Since I was new to social networking sites, I thought it was important for me to respond to every update, but “Going to work” frustrated me because what should I say? Telling him “that sucks” could be just as insulting as writing “Yay!” because I didn’t know how he really felt about going to work. Should I click the “like” button, but what if he works in a sweatshop? Do I really want to give that the thumbs up? I thought about telling him, “Good for you” and adding, at the end, the coy emoticon wink “;)”showing that this was a sarcastic statement meant in good fun. I felt it was better to wait for others to respond, but no one did. I assumed that everyone was sharing my problem, and in the end, I wrote nothing because I became too angry with this “friend” and his inability to use punctuation. Honestly, it would have been easier for me if he had used, for example, an exclamation point: “Going to work!” Then I would have known his excitement and would have given the perfect response: “It’s about time you lazy ass! ;)."

During my first few weeks on Facebook, I found that the more friends I collected, the more I was assailed by grocery lists, “Need to pick up milk”; exercise routines, “Ran five miles today. Whew! I’m tired!”; drinking preferences, “uncork the bottle, it’s wine nite”; sarcastic parents, “I only slept three hours last night. Thanks, (insert newborn’s name)”; and angry non-sequiturs, “Listen, I don’t care what you heard, but it wasn’t my idea!” And as I read the updates, I couldn’t help but to have an overwhelming feeling of apathy for these friends. In fact, I felt so depressed that that’s all they had going in their lives that I stopped using Facebook, deciding if they really had anything important to say they would call me. After two months and no phone calls, I received an email from “The Facebook Team” telling me what I already knew: “You haven’t been back to Facebook recently.” The email’s second sentence was simple enough: “You have received notifications while you were gone.” But, to me, it dripped of a mother’s “Oh, I-saw-your-slightly-senile-great-grandmother-the-other-day-and-she-said-she-understands-that-you’re-too-busy-to-visit” passive-aggression. So I thought, “Okay, Facebook, you win. I’ll visit.” And just like visiting a senile great grandmother, I spent most of my time trying to figure out what people were saying and not knowing how to properly respond.

During the same week I received the Facebook email, I went to a party and the conversation turned to Facebook. After I questioned the site’s usefulness, I joked about people sending status updates through the mail. “Wouldn’t that be disappointing,” I said, “to receive a postcard from someone and thinking that person took the time to buy the postcard and stamps, and then, on the back, it read something like, ‘just woke-up’.” We continued to laugh about random postcard status updates the rest of the night, but the next day I seriously started to question the nature of language. Shouldn’t we expect more out of communication? Shouldn’t language be an insightful dialogue and not simply status updates? To prove that there is more to communication, I decided to begin a social experiment/experience that I called, “Gone Postal”. For thirty days I would send all my status updates through the mail, hoping the recipients began thinking about the weight of words. It would be the ultimate postal satire. I posted my idea in a note on Facebook and within minutes six friends called me a genius and wanted to be part of the experiment. At the end of the first day, I had fourteen friends who were excited to get my status updates in the mail. And, in mid-June, when “Gone Postal” officially began, I was sending my updates to 19 people, which was approximately 15 percent of my “friends list”. Now, I thought, they’ll all share my disappointment in language.

Become A fan of Gone Postal: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gone-Postal/89972927683

The mummyfestos cracking open after the Bastille came out of her mythochondrial boudoir.

The Corpse Cookbook is proud to present our first recipe from jj phillips!

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

“Governor Nelson Rockefeller declares Woodstock a national disaster area.” Woodstock was on the front page of the New York Times for days. My mother, who had allowed her barely 16 year old daughter to go to this rock concert, was appalled. But to her it wasn’t the lack of amenities that was horrifying, it was the sight of her daughter dressed in a blue work shirt and blue bell bottom jeans, surrounded by half-a-million other young people attired in the same fashion that ran a chill down her spine; it reminded her of something more sinister and repugnant, though in her day they wore brown. In our matching uniforms of blue, armed with tents and sleeping bags, and with the help of an endless downpour we were about to turn the green upstate fields on Yasgur’s farm into a mire.

"Hello, I'm home!"
      It was Harold, calling so loudly from just inside the front door of the Ins & Outs Press building, his voice ringing with pure glee, that I could hear him clearly from my apartment three floors up; which itself was immediately below the two-floor suite I'd given over to him for his couple of weeks stay with me.
     It was early winter 1984 and Harold had just returned to Amsterdam from a brief reading tour somewhere in Germany. Prior to that he'd made his second appearance at an annual Benn Posset-organized One World Poetry Festival (the previous having been P78 six years earlier, when Hal and I first met). Shortly after the festival, and before he'd moved into I&O, we performed together at an auxiliary event Benn had arranged at the de Melkweg (Milky Way) multi-media center. Harold was casually clad (tight brown leather, I seem to recall), in keeping with Amsterdam's easygoing artistic temperament. Whereas I--in suit, tie and city-slicker Stetson--was dressed way beyond merely to the nines.
     "Aren't you overdoing it?" Harold finally asked, his sideways glance at my outfit betraying confusion rather than anything remotely judgmental.
     I simply smiled and kept walking.
     Following our reading, however, and over drinks at the bar, Harold patted me on the shoulder and said: "I take it back. That get-up is perfect for you. You're the gangster poet, after all." 

In the beginning, William Willcocks had wanted to be a missionary, but instead he became the foremost British irrigation engineer of his time, and God saw that it was good.

In 1902 Willcocks designed the world's largest bridge--the Aswan Dam across the Nile--and two years later he was knighted for his work reconstructing the waterways of South Africa after the Boer War. With a resume like this, it was not surprising that Willcocks developed a reputation for megalomania. After observing him at work, the British archaeologist, writer, and sometime intelligence agent Gertrude Bell--no wilting flower herself--wrote: "Sir William is a 20th century Don Quixote, erratic, maddening--and entirely loveable; a streak of genius, a good slab of unreasonableness…Good luck go with him, and may I never have to work with him." Willcocks, tall and lanky, always wore a slight scowl, and he spoke and wrote with a blunt honesty that his well-mannered English colleagues found off-putting.

The book of meditation has fourteen chapters.