09/15/2008

so the last few days have consisted of me going through old issues of "portfolio" magazine at the office. paul graham has come to the top of my pretty short list of "photographers who have succesfully managed to sucessfully make both challenging and beautiful work". in an older issue i've found a portfolio called "empty heaven".





it's already bringing on the big, hard-hitting questions like "is there a place for me in photography?" and "what am i really doing here? i guess most of these things don't matter but when you spend the majority of your days alone without internet access, reading books, re-watching "william eggleston in the real world" and listening to "SMOG" records then you can go to really weird places in your mind where everything becomes either really important or completely meaningless.

my last few days have been late-starters.
wake up around 11, make some breakfast (really long breakfasts... like more then just toast or cereal ones with 5 cups of coffee) and then watch the only english television shows i can find so that i can read the finnish subtitles and try to pick up some of the language...



most of the time, my internet doesn't work and so i'm left with pretty slim pickings between 11 channels which only sometimes have programs in english. i can't lie. i watched a show called "veronica mars" once and most afternoons you could find me watching episodes of "dr phil".



usually after some tv i go to the library where i rape the music department.



i got about 40 records on my itunes now. a bunch of JJ CALE, the rolling stones albums i didnt have, the bob dylan records i didn't have, some obscure nick drake (bootleg?), the game's first album, nwa greatest hits, and some weird dr dre record called "2002" which i haven't listened to yet. maybe a mixtape. the department is huge though, it's basically a free record store. i can't figure out why american libraries aren't this good but i imagine it has something to do with the culture collapsing on itself. or maybe sarah palin banned music departments?
know what i mean?
that brings me to...
another bummer. seeing the news on cnn.
who is sarah palin? where did she come from? is this a joke?
am i going to wake up in a hospital and find that the fateful night back in 2007 at "the reality" actually sent me into a terry schiavo coma for the last year? did i quantum leap that night? this can't be real. did someone trick me into a k-hole?



i'm ready to wake up now. and when i do, it will be the year 2020 and complete utopia. and there was already a retrospective of my work in the MOMA because everyone thought i'd never come out of the coma. or at least california will have seceded from the union and voted in a real governor that was never in action movies and sarah palin was just some warped fucked up figment of my imagination. if this is all real, my absentee ballot is going to have a big "fuck you" on the envelope. i'd totally make a mail-bomb joke right now too but i'm ALREADY on the homeland security/transportation security administration watch-list so it's probably not a smart idea.

so when i'm not at the library hanging out and drinking coffee then i'm helping install an exhibition that opens next week. and even then, i'm mostly just drinking coffee in the cultural center cafe and sitting outside with everyone while they take smoke breaks (which seem to be about every 15 to 20 minutes here and which has also resulted in me actually wanting to join in but knowing i shouldn't and then not).
the good news is that i CAN get some cuban cigars at an okay price so when my finances are a little more stable i'll probably treat myself. for now it's the shitty 1 euro cigarillos at the bar on saturday night if i so choose. so, the work in the show ranges from pretty bad to really bad (see below)





but hanging the show has provided me with free lunches, an all expenses paid-trip across the country to a sattelite of the same exhibition, and the company of people who don't share common language but seem real cool. the real downer is that i still don't know what anyone is ever saying so i nod a lot and also re-read the same piece of paper i've had in my pocket for 6 days from the bank to avoid uncomfortable eye contact.

now i kind of know what jodie foster felt like in that movie where she lives in the wilderness and speaks jibberish about tree's in wind but in super fucked up broken mountain people english.
i know about 10 finnish words and when i speak them i get the impression it's not very well. so i repeat them and people still don't know what i'm saying but i probably say them louder and even more poorly
the humor thing still hasn't worked itself out either so i stopped trying to be jovial.
or maybe i'm just not that funny?


JUST ANOTHER TAY IN THE MOTHERFUCKIN WAY



I'M OFF TO TAMPERE, FINLAND for a sauna party, two receptions, a "salmon soup" dinner (barf) with the curators (i have a list of hardhitting questions in my mind about why they made all the seemingly meaningless and weak conceptual and aesthetic decisions that i may or may not get to), and some free food and drank for a weekend in what i'm told is the "most cultured" city in finland.