I. Selfish
Friday night I went to the closing of the G2 gallery exhibit. A School of the Art Institute space, G2 has a new show rotate in about every 1-1.5 months. This particular show, which has been in for about a month, had a friend's work (actually a couple of friends' although I didn't know that... it was a grad student exhibition) in it, and I decided I needed to see it before it hit the road.

1. A pretty fascinating title, all things said. Even before going, I got to thinking about why an exhibit would be called "Selfish," and what it means for a bunch of art students to fit their work under that description. An obvious first impulse for me was to think about the selfishness--or maybe the self-centeredness, which relates but is not exactly the same thing--of so many artists I've known.

Some artists have a tendency to view others/objects through their own perspective while pretending to be projecting into another person's space. A struggle of postmodern solipsistic inevitabilities. Especially writers and actors spend so much time believing they're a number of other people, truly believing and maybe getting as close to the other as possible, that they tend to forget people are outside of them. The people we imagine are not the people who breathe around us. This forgetting is both a form of self-centeredness (and the more I think about it, the more I wonder how this phrase leads to, or is related to, selfishness) and extreme selflessness as well. Selflessness, not in the sense of "generous" (like a mum who takes care of her children first, always first before her self), but selfless in the sense that the I disappears, gets lost sometimes, as we enter into the imagined Other-I.

But "Self-Centered" is not the title of the show I went to. The title was "Selfish," which I believe implies action although it's an adjective. I behaved selfishly. I am a selfish person. Everything is for myself. I will take care of myself (at the expense of others). I am the type of person to take care of myself (at the expense of others). Is the parenthetical always implied? I guess I think so. The difference between a word like "self-sufficient" and "selfish" is fairly extreme. There's such a degree of greed and arrogance in the term "selfish."

So, we start with a title that makes me nervous. I start thinking about the whole "who do you write for" and "what are you accomplishing" thing. But important to note: the title "Selfish" is, in a sense, neutral. Not "let's all be selfish and make merry," but simply the word. Not "as an artist, I condone selfishness in artists" or "as a politically-conscious artist, I condemn selfishness in the world," but just a static state. It got me interested.

2. When I went, I supposed that there'd be about an hour of presentation of some sort, and then a walk through of the four-five rooms of art, a chance to talk to the artists, etc. But the closing ceremony, divided into two sections, was less a presentation than a performance. The first half of the show, about 1.5 hours, was billeted as "spoken word," but was not so much spoken word as it was a reading--although about 3-4 of the readers employed some of the better characteristics of spoken word. The second half was a viewing of about 8 short films.

I think the artists were surprised to see such a large audience, and indeed it was large. About 50 people were there, I would guess, many milling about in the rear or the sides because the show was roughly 15 chairs short. I got stuck in the back on the floor, which was just fine... The acoustics took some time sorting out (a loud ringing off and on for the first performance), but eventually the show took off and had me intrigued. The first half of the "spoken word" performers did well, held my attention for the most part. A hilarious piece about "the attempters, the bad, and the good" (that's an approximate translation not exact) meditated on the various forms of fucking, and how fucking could move from "attempt" to "bad" depending on the amount of verbalization going on. Although her piece was pretty funny, I have to admit I was more entranced by her voice... extremely lilting, a kind of light southern drawl bringing out the important emphases. This is what I thought a few of the pieces did better than others, making some of the work "spoken word" and the rest of it just reading.

By the second half of the reading, I was getting a little worn down. I started to became temporarily pissy after a 10-minute piece by a guy who I'm sure meant well, but read some slightly-pompous philosophizing, which I'm sorry, just doesn't read well unless you're going to hype the poetry and de-hype the mathematical language (it amazingly coincided with my September entry "Intellectuals Grind Beef"). This was followed by a piece that sounded interesting but couldn't hold my attention, and finally by a hilarious piece by a MFAW graduate who wrote about joining an online dating group, getting ignored, and the dissolution of "winking at himself" followed by "writing flirtation letters to himself" and then "getting pissed off at himself" and "blocking himself" from himself. A good way to end.

The second half of the performance was a bunch of film pieces that made me feel like perhaps I should take up filmmaking, having only one quarter of experience and a good eye under my belt. The short films were either conceptually interesting and visually inane, or visually interesting and conceptually inane, usually the former. I was amazed by how slapped together some of the films looked... Of course, my friend's piece--"Tea Ceremony"--was conceptually interesting and short enough to hold itself together... the visual relied on jk's incredible flair/talent for fashion, and so worked out well. The last piece was a kind of "candid camera" series about hugging random strangers on the street, and it was pretty well done - from different angles, inviting speculation and anticipation. But I was nevertheless relieved when these were done.

Afterwards, I had the opportunity to browse around and look at various pieces in the exhibit itself--lots of photography, some installation pieces, and a few paintings. Actually, most of it was well-done... particularly the three paintings done by an artist my roommate recognized--works with ropes draping across the canvas, occasionally pausing from one side to another to hold a bag of dark material (looked like coal)... and then swish over to the other side. These paintings seemed very nautical to me, and reminded me of barges carrying petroleum-products across waters, but I honestly didn't have a chance to study them long enough.

3. But if you asked me if the exhibition really earned selfishness, I'd have to say no. I'm not sure where the title originated... there didn't seem to be enough conceptual overlap between the various artists' works, or maybe no formal tie-together available for the viewing. I think I would have appreciated a manifesto or rhapsodic contemplation of selfishness to end the closing ceremony, or to start it, but didn't find one. And really, when you think about it... thinking, really thinking, about what selfishness means, is, and does - it's pretty important. Too bad I didn't get any further with that...

I was nevertheless very happy to have gone. So, the exhibit must've been doing something well!

II. World Series and Psuedo-Dancing

I went out last night with my new-found winenight buddies, and yes, I had a good time even though it took place in a sports bar!

I spent an inordinate amount of time looking at everybody and feeling all soft and warm and fuzzy to have such a group around me, hollering quietly when the White Sox played well, so as to not upset Houston-identifying T & C. I found it actually quite humorous to watch the nervous tension slide in and out, the pitchers of beer to slide on the table, people to circle around the table, bumping each other and patting each other's backs. Formations.

At some point, a friend tried to stuff herself thoroughly into a 6-inch overhang-space behind the doorframe, and then lamented that her ass was too big... I was confused. But I sense this is what it's all really about.

I am still adapting though... I ended up calling my sis right before going into the bar and telling her that I was going to watch the Astros versus the White Sox. "What, is that football?" she asked. This morning, I talked to sp and told her, yet another Pac-Northwestener, that I watched the World Series, and she responded, "Is that the Soccer Series?" Basically, this affirmed every sense I've had about my Bville family folks being completely, if not totally, ignorant about the intricacies of sports, sports bars, and people running around with chaw in their lips. It made me feel better about my own deep deep ignorance on these matters.

And so, although I would piss and moan about the pitcher losing it, I really was making it all up because it sounded good and seemed to look right. Haha. So, when the Astros lost the first game, poor T & C were momentarily bluesy, but then bucked up under a pretended nonchalance. We got even drunker and then I managed to rile everyone up into what I thought would nicely lead to dancing... "I pity the foo."

Roving back and forth, I let the guys know the girls were dragging them, and goddamn it yes, they better go for it after we (and by we, I mean me, since all the other girls seem to understand baseball quite well) had suffered through the sports bar thing. Surely they could suffer through the dancing. So, we got going, walked basically what was a W-N-E pattern, backtracking and laughing. Asking various folks for directions since there was a little geographical infighting.

The place we were heading, when we got there, had a line halfway down the block. Sigh. I managed to secure us under-5$ covers at another place trying to hit their quota, but this is when my new peeps bagged out on me, and dragged us all into another virtually-sports bar (although the decor was nautical, various paintings of ships along the walls). Fortunately for me, everybody at least seemed a little guilty. "Sorry, j" was something I heard several times, and cc even came and loner-danced with me (trying maybe to tone down my obnoxiousness, because damn, I wasn't in full swing, but I was heading that way, and dared her to dance with all the passersthroughers... which she said was "rude"). But with time, lm & z & e & most of the others, did a little fun table-jive... lm and cc pretending to yank each other over the table via imaginary dance-rope, which was fun. I do believe cc almost--and I emphasize almost because it was never consummated although I was waiting--knocked over her beer about twenty-thousand times.

I also got to hear about traveling as a woman in Egypt, and then I got to go out and grab a nice quesadilla at Clarks. Although we also ordered some Mexican potatoes that must have had chili powder or something mixed in, because it burned my mouth badly for about an hour, and we couldn't finish the potatoes. And then, the long journey home alone, taking the sub south (damn it was friggin cold waiting on that platform), and then the long journey north.

A good evening, and I listed to music on the way back, but it was late enough for me to miss my family, my buds-in-crime, and to wonder what I was doing here. A distinct disadvantage of going home quietly at 4:00am... sadness. Contemplation of the number 11. But as I walked across the transfer walkway at Washington (red to blue), I noticed it was all men around me... about 15 folks walking through a white tube, and I thought, I may be missing the past at this present, but the tube, these guys, the music, and the walk from one side to the next with all these men strangers around me... is why I am here. And enough reason to write.