The bathroom that my toothbrush is in is locked shut. I’ve been rubbing toothpaste into my gums and chewing a lot of gum.
I went to an exhibit on Picasso yesterday at the Brooklyn Museum, and people were very mad. It was all about how he treated women as objects, “dick flesh vases” or something obscene like that. It felt reductive and clickbaity; the title of the exhibition was It’s Pablo-matic. One of the sections was titled (Powerful) women doing (powerful) stuff. My eyes rolled out of their sockets. They juxtaposed insidious quote-bites of his with pseudo-inspiring excerpts from feminists. Like any artist I am primarily the painter of women, and, for me, woman is essentially a machine for suffering. A lot of the work on display featured women being dominated by men who had the heads of beasts. They were sort of sad and uncomfortable. And I kind of thought: so true. No one suffers like a woman being overpowered by a beast, and that shit happens. It focused on how Picasso portrayed sex as something both tender and savage, deforming and destabilizing. Though this is something that many women artists have depicted as well with their own work, which were also featured: ecstatic dissolution. Sex destabilizes at its core. It’s primarily concerned with the exchange of liquids, after all, another state of being entirely. It forces vulnerability while asking one to let go of their body and inhabit another. That shit is scary, though titillating, and sexy. Feasibly a form of beast is one’s own mind faced with this task, because it’s not an altogether unconscious one. Sure, with a loving partner or someone you are just so attracted to or of course a certain level of inebriation these things become easier, and it is easier to let go of your body and trust it to another person, but naturally nerves arise and they can overwhelm. Pleasure therefore is imperative, because it’s the only mode of restabilization possible, and that Picasso excludes in his work. That is his evil as an artist, not a drunken diary entry. I believe Picasso was perverted. I don't need to revel in his perversion.
I found Hadji Murad being sold on a table outside of the museum for eight dollars, which I’ve been looking for forever. I thought maybe this is why I’ve come to New York, jobless, just to find this book—though I fear it’s a bad translation and I’ll have to find another copy. I slept all of friday and saturday. Read a book a day tuesday, wednesday, and sunday. Walked around some more listening to a podcast about how people are leaving New York because one can’t build a Life here without being Rich. I sort of shrugged at the irony since when have I ever wanted to build a Life. Sure I want to make money and maybe buy a house one day but for now I like writing and taking pictures and reading books all day. It’s a foundation I’m building. I wouldn’t want to have a Life without having read all these books and walked around so much and laid in so many parks, so why not be in New York. This is a Life. I am, though, painfully aware of my unemployment. I’m one to work and do believe in the merits of labor. Anyone reading this need help with something? Like moving a couch or whatever. God I wish I had a patron.
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