When all else fails...

do your taxes.

Statistics

My least favorite thing in the world is when people brag about page numbers. In person or on Facebook, it only leads to the listener/lurker feeling bad about her/himself, because the nature of academic life is such that you are constantly aware of the impossible task of reading everything you need to know or writing down everything you want to say. It's not academic neuroticism; it's the nature of knowledge. Still, hearing the number of pages somebody managed to bang out in a day makes one feel pitiful, a loafer, a slouch. No matter whether the pages written were any good or had a thousand long block quotes taking up all the white space, or if the book they read had pictures or was written by the Dr. Seuss of their discipline. No matter. Internal monologue: OH GOD, WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY TIME?!

And so, it is with the mental health of all my numerous and sundry Facebook friends and at the sad expense of my few, so very few but loyal blog readers, that I announce the birthweight of Chapter 1. I'm sorry to do this, friend(s), but I have to. For all the times I thought, hmm, well, if i can squeeze out 25 pages for each chapter, add 10 pages for intro and conclusion, tack on a hefty bibliography and images, maybe I'll just clear a respectable 150 pages???, I announce to you:

Chapter 1: 73 pages, not including 59 images.

*I do not know this baby.

BOO-YA!

Only Sort of Inspiring (Or Is It?)

I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end.

(Michel Foucault interview in Technologies of the Self)

For all of us trying to write, these words are cold comfort, no? Nonetheless, are they not also secretly exciting?


So, I've decided to stay on and try to write here while I can.

I heard a story recently by the expatriated Canadian Mavis Gallant called "When We Were Nearly Young." In it, a girl goes to Madrid thinking that "if I set myself against a background into which I could not possibly merge, that some outline would present itself." It doesn't work. (Or does it?)

I'm waiting for an outline, too. Not so much of myself, but of the way I want to write about the things that I am writing about. It's coming, slowly, and I'm scared that if I leave and go through all the steps of playing house again, I'll lose momentum and the things that are exciting now will slip my mind.


Here are some boring things that I've been doing to get excited about another Moscow year:
1) ordering books and shoes for MomGote to bring in June
2) reconstituting dried chickpeas for making hummus
3) begging you guys to visit (!)


4) reciting Saroyan: It'll hit you you in July.

Navel Gazing

An extremely weak attempt at punnery. And with the wrong fruit, no less.


So, friends, it is nearly the end of April. And where does that bring us? Old MasterGote is contemplating what in the world to do next year? A weighty decision and a mighty puzzle, to which the answer seems entirely unclear. Some days, the bahn mi of Brooklyn beckon. Others, the inertia (or is that momentum?) of work makes me think I'd be a fool not to stick around. Things here are at once so easy and so clear. Everything has been pared down to the bone, a sort of delayed coming-true of some f-ed up dream I've had in the back of my mind since at least 1999. Asceticism and productivity. Simple living and all that. But, as anyone who's had a wish fulfilled would tell you, it never happens the way you'd imagined it.


I miss you guys in real life. I miss LFarns. But the most frustrating part is that I cannot tell with any clarity what might be the right decision. I don't know what goes into the scales - what I'm gaining or losing. As far as I can tell, the two seem pretty equal, each has its perks and disadvantages. It is infuriating.


What should I do, internet? Please send your carrier pigeons with the answer soon! Avoid personal bias if you can; personal anecdotes encouraged.

Queer Links?

What do the following two things have in common?

• an essay about footnotes ("i through xvii" by Christoph Boots, LTTR 4)
• a zine about pickling and cheesemaking ("Wild Fermentation: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Cultural Manipulation" by Sandor Ellix Katz)
  

I'm starting to forget why this makes sense, but I'm going to ponder while my cabbage¹ ferments.

¹Deviant cabbage!!!

Groys Talks

For those of you who are interested, here are my notes from the first of three lectures by Boris Groys at the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art.

Two disclaimers: 1) while Groys's lecturing style is very clear and lends itself well to notation, his lecture was in Russian, while my notes are in English. This means that there will inevitably be some omissions and mistranslations. I'll post a link to the audiotape if/when I get one. 2) While I find the general topic timely and interesting, Groys irritates me quite a bit by what he does with it. My at times irritated commentary is in square brackets.

And finally, I cannot help but feel that Groys's missing the mark on the state of art today (his utter cynicism and lack of historical memory) has something to do with the recent awarding of the prestigious Kandinsky prize to the ultranationalist/fascist artist, Alexei Belyaev-Gintov. (That link is in Russian, but I feel like the images speak for themselves.) In particular, there is something very odd about 1) the prize being sponsored by Deutsche Bank and 2) the strangely pussy-footed reporting the choice is getting in the English-language press. (Thanks for the link, kg.) Groys (being in my mind a Western critic), the mostly-Western panel of judges who voted on the Kandinsky prize, and the Bloomberg coverage of the whole thing, seem - as kg noted - blind to the gravity of the situation. They all seem to be playing around, refusing to take seriously the unmistakably chilling pitch of the words spoken loud and clear. ("Мы все вернем назад!" - We will return everything to the way it was!)

[Disgrace.]

I'm running to the second lecture now, but more on this later. As I said to kg, there is plenty of blame to go around. For now, I'm laying it squarely in the hands of the art world.

Personality Test

If you got the following as the preview snippet of an email, what would be your first conclusion:

We received a call from Payroll Svcs. and said that your appointment as Type 6 expired. This means that the timesheet I processed did not go...?

a) there has been a bureaucratic glitch in the system, help is on the way
b) this will be mildly-to-moderately annoying, but with a little cajoling, things should get cleared up in the next few days/weeks
c) i knew it: i'm out two week's pay. nothing left to do. breathe, breathe, breathe, zenzenzenzenzen

Guess what MasterGote's conclusion was?

Does it matter that, despite the fact that the exciting conclusion of the email was:

...thru. I'm putting in a paperwork (PAF) for you as Type5 and so your paydate will be 10/10/08. I will be away next week but you can check with --- if you have any questions,

I'm still going with answer C?

I think Ilya Kabakov has an installation about this condition. It's called Toilet. It's about living your life in a toilet. As if you deserve it.

Ilya Kabakov, Toilet, 1992, reinstallation in Moscow 2008.
(More, unrelated, on this here.)

But I get to look at art all day...who needs timely wages?

OMGOMGOMGOMG

Oh, telephone, how you make old MasterGote cringe, yet how happy you make him! After pacing his little square box for about 6 hours straight, gnashing his teeth and biting his hooves, your dear old MasterGote finally took the plunge and dialed the number. Oh, that fateful number, you know the one - the one that has been tormenting him for so long. The one that MasterGote has weathered grant applications and poopyhead airports to dial without paying long-distance fees. Finally, it is breached. The appointment is set for this Wednesday. OMGOMGOMGOMG!

MasterGote cannot scream into his beard forever, now he wishes to call someone and bray out in peals of joy! Oh, telephone, how you taunt at one moment, satisfy in another, and then withhold withhold withhold. Well, nevermind! It's gote-to-gote time. OMGOMGOMFG.