Here are Jim’s recent journal entries, by which you will soon understand in the course of reading these letters it becomes apparent that he just does not give a fuck—and so, well, Jim will probably not give a fuck by me reposting them here:
Houston Invades New York
I am back from new york….the highlights and lowlights are many…after infesting the gallery with roaches
we were given a key to the gallery…it was as if I had
a 2500sq ft apartment for three days with all my stuff…odd there was the bar 2000 miles away….the space was divided in two…I had a front room with this ungodly amount of stuff,,,shoe shelves,plexiglass cube of shoes ,theatere seats,display case ,pile of projectors ,record players,ledger books,hanging assemblage of coat hangars,hanging tricycle,hanging manican,hanging dusty dirty vacuum cleaner, pyramid stack of records,etc..etc…etc…and in the next room were 6 large plasma sceen tv’s on the wall and nothing else…yes there was a contrast…
on wednesday was a pre opening and met board members and dignitaries from the Cue Foundation but the Art Guys showed up wednesday at 3 about three hours before the preview opening and did some curating….the person at cue had hung my paintings at perfect gallery 55 inch centered height using a level and well was perfect…Jack looked at me and all the white walls and said we’ll help you get this more like you Jim….suddenly Jack was knocking into paintings and putting his shoes on the wall and then bought a 12 pack of beer and began spilling beer on the floor and on some of the tables and went out with a dust pan and swept up some dirt and spread it around and found my hidden beer bottles and broke a few and basically rehung the show into chaos and made it look more as if i had tried to do it…The director walked in and asked me what was going on “the art guys are curating”….oh and then the art guys gave the gallery staff explicit directions to not ever clean the space during the show… suddenly it became a big fuck you new york art world rather than slightly eccentric explosion of stuff…must say it took me off the hook for being in the system…the standards of judgement suddenly became moot and the show was outsider and an all encompasing installation…and well it worked…. The 50 photos by John Powers were placed on the floor and taped down and well the gallery staff took a little time getting used to walking on the photos…it just didn’t seem right….but Thursday night was the show and some 900 people went to the opening…the streets were packed a bit of mardi gras feel…and apparently we were the space to be at…people hung out and broke bottles and played the record player and it was a party…a real good one…and the director told me that he was getting rave reviews of the show from his friends in the art world…8 collectors have set up appointments for tours to purchase paintings…i have been invited to meet the board of the New Museum in october for having a show there in the future…the list of people who signed in are mostly museum curators and gallery owners….weird ….very weird.. I did put a lot of thought into the layout of the show and consciously made the space into a cemetary of analog(the digital age has killed and rendered into the dusty corners of neglect projectors and film,record players and records, newspapers and typewriters…I made little tombstones with the objects and the photos of the late night ghosts that wander the halls of notsuoh late at night .
must say Houston was represented by around 50 people…Art Guys, Nestor, Robert and Khloe, Wilson and Sam, John Powers, Vivienne, Sal, Professor Sex , Stephen Gross, James, Misha, Evan , Shawna, Elaine, Tim Daley ,Toby and Rhythmn, my daughter, Missy, and former Notsuoh’s now in new york …Mark, and Shaila Dewan,and Giles and Henry and Deborah Moore and david Kidd and then my parents and 20 of their friends….must say quite a turnout from all my slacker friends…very nice friendsSelf Destruction Gone Wild…the Performance Night
Friday night was to be a performance…but the Free Radicals fell through and the ballet dancer skipped out…Blarin’ Aaron got bit by a spider and couldn’t make it and Toby was on his way for the show but he called at 11 in the morning saying his clutch went out in Pennsylvania…however I had four Houston poets….and we agreed on the themes of self destruction, illusion and masks….i figured i would give a performance retrospective without music and do something with body fluids…I had test tubes of 10 of my body fluids that i labled with a sharpie…BLOOD SPERM SALIVA TEARS….but i left them in my man purse at the uhaul place in Harlem…and for two days could not remember where I left my spit , blood , sperm,tears .ear wax, mucous, sweat, pre cum, skin oil, and pus….I didn’t think anybody really would steal them but people can be strange…beleive it or not i got them back,,, the plans for the performance got slightly derailed as someone got uproariously drunk and heckled the entire performance…many thought i had planted her as an actor to create dramatic tension…but it was way too real…”Fuck you professor Sex that’s not how BGK reads…let me do it ” …and she proceeded to channel BGK…but the gallery director got scared when she fell off a stool and took a dive on the concrete…blood etc…Toby who arrived 20 minutes before the show played guitar as the fire dept showed up with a stretcher and strapped the young woman to it….she was not to pleased as some actor grabbed the mic and gave a play by play to music of this cursing woman taken to an ambulance and hauled away….it was a notsuoh moment of performance art…all to real and over the top….the performance became an open mic with my father singing a love song to my mother and my brother holding his hand over the hecklers mouth to shut her up…it was fucking surreal…I did the mayo and picante stuff but that was not the show it was life just being real and alive….by the way don’t curse out a doctor who has lots of drugs and needles….”You know your pissing me off” and this elephant gun of a drug in the arm and “Fuck youuuuuuuuu” like the fading away of the last song on the record
And here comes a letter:
Hi, Glenn,
Chloe did a wonderful job resurrecting….or wait. no. not resurrecting…that would imply you were dead. you are not dead…but she brought you to life in New York in the poetry reading part of Jim’s show Friday night. we all agreed it was as if you were there. She stood on your picture to read it.
actually, Joe started to read and Chloe beligerent’ly told him he had it all wrong an interjected – for the good of society, really. (and joe willingly stepped aside)
then she proceeded to beligerate the rest of the show and ultimately fell on a beer bottle. surely a story you will hear many ways from various peoplespectives. but ha!
BGKPOETRY.COM 