It gets a little harder to hate the pandas at the National Zoo when they do adorable things like take up painting.
They still sleep 18 hours a day and make it impossible to get past the tourists to the elephant house, but at least they’re attempting to make something of themselves.
Up at Storm King with my bear. This place is unreal, leaves gonna change and make it even more beautiful.
Love love love the aesthetics of all the Switcheroo pieces on sale at Fab today… wish that concrete sculptures had any sort of utility or physical space for existence in my life so I could own this puppy.
How to Explain it to my Parents
Brilliant documentary series by a pair of Dutch filmmakers wherein abstract artists attempt to explain their work to mom and/or dad. Pretty touching stuff… you really can’t go home again, as an artist, is the takeaway I think. But bless the parents, they really do try.
National Gallery Visitor Attacks Gauguin Painting, Screaming “This Is Evil!”
I’m sort of wondering what, precisely, is evil here… just the female body in general? Female bodies with mashed fruit? For a hot second I thought it might be a gay thing, but the woman on the right is clearly focused on something vaguely in front of her, or perhaps looking without seeing at all, not staring at the other lady’s chest as the angle of her head would suggest.
These intense reactions to art are always fascinating… in the grand scheme, Gauguin is so very not inflammatory! You have to wonder what set her off. They seem sad and contemplative, and the whole painting seems kind of foreboding… was this woman reacting to the same evil the subjects have weighing on their minds? That is my current theory, in case anyone was wondering.
If it is at all possible that every single seat in this puppy is not yet filled, I think I am buying myself a National Poetry Month present. That month starts tomorrow, by the way, so you should be keeping an eye on WeAreNotAVerse for the annual Poetry Challenge. Anyway click through to Poets House if you want to be my super-nerd class-taking buddy.
Tim just sent me a really lovely draft of a poem. I put down the ten things I should be doing* and read it many times and sent him comments. It felt really good.
It’s more complicated now, realizing that I don’t just miss writing: that’s frustrating, but ultimately fixable through the ever-elusive self-discipline thing. But if I miss workshopping too? That’s like triple the time commitment from me, and involves other people creating hours they don’t have, plus these probably have to be specific smart people who I love and trust. Feels kind of unsolvable, which is very sad.
But the poem was lovely. That should be my takeaway.
*Said things include flaking on two plans with friends. Feel like a jerk, but it is so rainy and I expended so much “being visible and stimulated” energy by shopping all day and my anal-retentive Virgo brain is frustrated from a lack of ability to nail down plans and schedules. None of these things make me feel like less of a jerk! Just even grumpier.
