yesterday in class, tom got angry about the tulip formation in calvinsim, i was not sure what it meant. i realized that i am so stupid when it comes to hardcore protestant theology.

So campus food drive, two hours trick or treating, this time for food for the food bank, every house i went to had food for us- on one house there was a note that said that this is all she had because her mom was in a nursing home. in others they gave us candy or words of encouragement. i feel like god has blessed me with this experince, reminded me that although depression often leads to solipism, if you can extend yourself it will be alright.


ballet tomorrow.

toms in vancouver, and im there next week and i am looking forward to it immensly.

It was a rather modestly sized audience that gathered last Saturday morning at 11 a.m. in Cooper Union's basement Great Hall to see newscaster Peter Jennings interview the 47-year-old New York artist Jeff Koons. The morning repartee kicked off the annual Art Walk NY fund-raiser put on by the Coalition for the Homeless, so everyone was full of a charitable spirit. Except that Jennings seemed not particularly sympathetic to Koons' work. "How did you like being called a 'master of kitsch' and a 'self-promoter'," he asked early on. "It was very painful," Koons answered earnestly, a tone that he maintained throughout. "I just tried to keep my work pure to my objectives."
Koons is a good salesman for his own work, and he explained what he was after in some of his more sensational pieces (in the vacuum cleaners he sought "the darker, masculine side of consumerism," and his explicit color photos of love scenes between himself and his ex-wife Ilona Staller, otherwise known as Cicciolina, an Italian porn star, were meant to express a romance of everyman and everywoman. "My work has always been collage, so I thought I'd collage myself into my own work." For those who look for secrets in an artist's childhood, Koons noted that his father had run a furniture showroom, and that he was always seeing things displayed.

The conversation had several bizarre highlights. Jennings asked Koons if it was true that he admired Michael Jackson more than anyone -- Koons apparently made such a statement in the past -- and Dan Graham asked from the audience whether Koons thought Jackson was gay. Jennings parried by asking to reserve the question for later. (Later never came, though a slide of Koons' ceramic sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles, which sold last year at Sotheby's for $5.6 million, did eventually go up on screen, and Koons said something about it representing the speed of evolution.) Koons volunteered that he admired Jackson because "he would do anything for his work, but ended up a tragic figure."

The artist also brought up his former wife and spoke at length about their divorce and child-custody dispute. "My ex-wife has a borderline personality disorder," he offered by way of explanation. "All ex-wives have borderline personality disorders," joked Jennings. Koons remained serious, and told the audience that his son Ludwig, now 10 years old, was "abducted" by his ex in 1994, and that in a "tremendous injustice by the Italian judiciary" he is not allowed to see him or talk to him on the phone. He hopes that his son will look back on some of his recent works with childlike imagery and realize that "my dad was thinking of me."

Koons also said that as a result of the clash, he had sought out and destroyed "60-some" works from the "Made in Heaven" series, the images of he and his wife having sex. He also talked about the 200-foot-long backdrop he made for the currently touring Rolling Stones stage show, which included images of female underwear stretched across the stage ("to create tension"), a trash can flying through the air, and a cascade of oversized corn kernels. Keith Richards was to be positioned in front of the corn, and had Koons remove five kernels from the mural, since he didn't want to be completely surrounded by corn when he played.

From artnet, we all love mr koons.

and joan mitchell

Thats a prince, a print though, not a painting and not the one i thought of.

joan mitchells in all the latest magazines, first major retrospective since she croaked and really i dont see it. ive read the theory and looked at the paintings, thought about it, looked some more, seen some live in london and nothing. its the stuff i usually like, the colours at least, and thats all a boy expects from abex these days- maybe tohugh its the incompleteness of the field or the failure to intergrate certain lines, or the messy scrawl- there are v. few messy scrawlers i enjoy (twombly), hmm- no idea really.

i do like the new richard prince joke paintings though, they look so serious- buff on buff, black on balck, white on white. silly henny youngmen style one liners.

its for of course. ive read this text book twice and i cannot think of anything but churlish thoughts. due on wednesday. trying to reconstruct an essay for adam, failing. tired .

an odd do nothing day

wrote for nyplm and this blog at &;30 , meet jess from newman

class at 9 am, talked about hellenistic athens, one class short

did about 50 pages of reading fro class

treid to talk to raymond about a gateway article

had a drs appointment for mens stuff- have you ever had a test for stds (i havent had pentrative sex for at least 6 mo. but my scrotum has been hurting for about three days) anyways they stick a swab up yr urethra-unpleasent in extremis.

got an email that some of my "fiction" would be published (50 bux american)-email me if you want details on that one

went to mass where the priest talked about depression

went home did some more reading

back to the gateway, tried to revise the saint albert art peice, my email decided to stop opening attachments

left gateway, bumped into daniel for a bit and we talked about the german new wave - wenders herzog fassbinder- along with the ldsers, sceintologists, orzon,punch drunk love et al

newman or my sisters games tonite- not sure which i want to go to.

thomas is speaking at campus crusade tonite, but i talked to him on tues., had class w. him on wednesday, and dropped by his work yesterday-where we talked again an hour and a bit-do i want to see him again?

fearsomes bitching about my lack of comments, but my nyplm writing has them and it makes me a wreck when there are none.

list is queer novels, written for ilx

Top Twenty

01) Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

02) On the Road-Kerouac

03) The Immoralist by Andre Gide

04) Billy Budd-Mellville

05) Symposium-Plato

06) Confessions of a Mask -Yukio Mishima

07) The Talented Mr Ripley-Highsmith

08) Cities of the Red Night-Burroughs

09) The Berlin Stories-Christopher Isherwood

10) Death Comes for the Archbishop -Willa Cather

11) Head Hunter-Findley

12) The Persian Boy - Mary Renault

13) Funny Boy -Shyam Selvadurai

14) The Coming Storm-Russell

15) Aimee and Jaguar-Fischer

16) The Naked Civil Servant-Crisp

17) Other Voices, Other Rooms-Capote

18) Myer Breckinbridge-Vidal

19) Collected Short Fictions-Saki

20) Maurice-Forrester

2/4 of thomas's roommates have started blogs. including one on shit. back to sleepless nights. midterm back today.

this new medication has caused me to sleep more then i have, well ever. 15 hrs a day for the last three days.

instead of writing an exam, thomas read my blog and then qouted it to me extensivley, with comments.

i am slightly uncomforatble, and emailed him thrice trying to process how i felt.

i forgot how meloncholy and personal this website is.

btw the quoting of Christs last words on the cross was meant to be self mocking.

thomas invited me to church three weeks ago, and i missed it, so he invited me again this week.
now i am not sure wether he is inviting me because he has to, i mean an evangglical christian likes to have his friends show up, its status, it means that he has saved one more then others
maybe he likes me though, and wants to do something socially.
i called him yesterday to see what time church was, but what i really wanted to ask him was- why me?
is it 'cause a sinner in the hands of an angry god is hot to convert
is it 'cause you want to spend time with me.
i also wanted to ask him how a baptist church service works, whether there was communion, who would be there, what am i expected to do, what do i wear.
i have been having a panic attack all day 'cause of this and my midterm, which is monday.
though i walked into the 2nd Cup attatched to the library today and my buddy Patricia comped me a an italian soda, and i have two a and e stories coming.
still unhappy.

so i went to the dr to get on medication. the therapist that the u of a requires one to see b4 the shrink told me that it was my deportmant.

next week, when i get the money together, i will be taking remeron. a tricylic-havent done those since i was 8, he says that my appetite and my anger may increase.

im trying to fit in as much people time as possible, cause im not miserable with people, they distract me.
i feel like a failure, like i tried every thing and nothing worked. i feel like i have betrayed a ton of people who have tried to help.
i feel like god has left me.
eli eli lama samach (correct my hebrew josh)

wondering why im not happy, even though my life is going well,wondering why i depend on god so much, curious about why i think my writing is shit, worried about how slow my writing is i pick up noon day demon and come to the awareness that depression will be with me pretty steady and that content is as good as happy, and recognzing that when i am tired i should sleep is all ok. its calming.

Lombardos Adam has been destroyed, it shattered after a pedestal collpased at the Met in NYC. Here is image about the sculpture and here is a NYT story about the entire fiasco It makes me sad

thursday- meeting w. fr. stephen. talked about god,sex,the saints ,obdeince(sp), why I would be a poor priest, mass, and of course edward gorey and the gashleycrumb tinnies - then interviewing two artists from mt allison nova scotia, doing their mfa here.

friday- 4 hours of bingo then adoration of the host, rushed home to change and then rushed back, discussion over pot luck, newman with icebreakers, worship and praise, and a talk by a nigerian seminarian which destroyed the pollyanna attitude north americans view conversion.then mini golf, a gin and tonic at the old timey british pub inside of the mall and a ride home where my drinking habits and what happens after i drink was displined

Top 40 Conserative Pop Songs, via NYPLM

odd list, but glad some one is looking at pop seriously and deeply. Hes wrong about the Beatles Revolution and Paul Anka sucks though.

sorting things out
The Hannibal Lecter trilogy, the one with Hopkins, is a discussion of the misbalanced body/mind Cartesian dialectic
In the first movie, SoTL- Hannibal, through his culture and intelligence seduces Clarice, and this seduction is thwarted because he could not escape, when he manages to escape- he does so to the sounds of the Goldberg variations and a Nitsch style spectacle.
He is Sadistic, not in the sense now, but in the sense of 18th century France- an aristocratic man of taste, who has enough money to fill those tastes in comfort until he goes a little too far.
In this view Hannibal, the movie is an extension of the madness of taste and money. Hannibal is an aristocrat, he sends flowers, he goes to the symphony, and he is spending his time as a Florentine scholar. When Clarice finally tracks him down, their love affair or his seduction goes foreword. The beginning of the quid pro quos is extended to its most logical extremes.
As well the villains in both of these are feminine- either transgendered freaks or the detective cuckolded to the point of castration.

This seductive man of wealth and taste, who commits evil out of boredom or prediction (like a fetish) is a common trope in 20th cent literature (cf. Dracula, That fucking rolling stones song, the master and marghertia, Hitler as frustrated artist et. al)
The filmmakers had extended the intellectual side of Lecter too much, and had to balance the themes. This is where Red Dragon comes in. It is a villain humiliated for his exterior ugliness, and therefore tries to correct it through sadistic acts of violence. The crimes here are not crimes of necessity (Jamie Gumb) or art (Lecter), they are pure Freudian acting out. This is why, when Lecter tries to seduce the detective (played by ed Norton), he fails. He uses the same techniques as he later uses on Clarice- esp. notes of class and senses other then sight (side note-bisexuality as signifier of open sexuality- is Lecter queer, is his taste queer- we assume that people who know about these things are- there is a note of it through the novel?)

anyways, the other thing is that the detective is handsome, and so is the victim- there are shots in singlets and shirtless. The physical is emphasized. The gumshoe is also married, with a family providing a borgie criticism of Lecters lack of family.
*Spoiler* in the last scene, the family in danger cliché fest, the detective humiliates his son the same way the killers grandmother humiliated him. Apparently the Red Dragon was a bed wetter that was threatened by castration every time he did it. The deceives kid pisses himself, and Norton’s character threatens with castration the same way. He also calls him a faggot, but this seems not homophobic as much as well a reinforcement of the humiliation of losing genitals, of being less then a man (as opposed to gum, who is desperate to get rid of his)
The last scene in red dragon has Norton’s family sailing into the sunset, is this analogues to Lecter wandering around a Brazilian market in
SoTL.
(note-Castration here meaning removal of both penis and testicles.
That castration-or fear of- is also found in all of the novels and movies- Gumb tries to Castrate himself, the hanged man, Judas and the Dectective are all castrated (but do not have their penis removed in Hannibal-as well Lecter eats most “meat” cuts, but does not eat the penis and testicles- unlike real serial killers (ie Ed Gien or Dahlmer)

At this house party i suggested john cage as a way to mock my pretension, he had some.

b/w growing up with an lds and a drunk, i am never sure how much booze is too much

After the retreat, there was a house party- i went (sort of invited myself) and it was catholic- made a fool of myself only once(an englishman wrote God Save the Queen on the whiteboard, and i scrawled under it- the facist regime-shes in the country and its pissing me off);slept for two hours on his couch, talked to one of the housemates about my conversion experince( a teacher named terry-not sure if hes queer or urban), ate v. good puffed wheat sqaures, and was driven home ca 3:30 am

As I was leaving Sat.s Retreat, a youth i councilled asked if i was coming tomorrow, and i was not sure i was invited, so i said i didnt know, he looked crushed.

There was a handsome man on the bus today, who spent his trip eating a plum and reading notes for a chem eng. class- on sat night i spent an hour telling someone to go into chem. eng.

I haven't been sleeping well lately, one or two days of no sleep followed by 12 or 14 houts of dead sleep, also been sleeping on buses, at parties, and nodding off everywhere from class to the movies.

I've been v. religous lately-the youth retreats, johns church, mass, reading the scripture, going to reconcillioton

when these two coincide, it usally means i am deeply unhappy but i like my life.

second catholic youth retreat in a month, am growing comfortable with the church, growing needy for god. talked to the vocation director at the retreat today and he thinks i should think about the priest hood. the only thing that is holding me back is celibacy.

thinking of johns praise band and realzing what i thought was straight ahead r&r was more then that, a constantly changing work, that suited the auidence and the preacher, who worked the same riffs over and over again, until they became signifigant or changing. this is important to my understanding of whats happening there, i just cannot place it.

email from out of the blue from a buddy who disappeared...nice.

clarifcation from yesterday about the two faced thing-i'm a gay christian, something i live w. , w/o the conflict it confuses some people

write a peice on the roman catholic priesthood advocating celibacy- get the back page in the opinon section, write smut(esp. using the line "butch gods with cocks like tree trunks"- get yr mug plastered in the teaser, have old buddies stop and gush. (although two people i know have commented out of the blue on the r/c thing) (which makes me worry-what do the people who like the celibate preist hood thing think of the cockpeice and vice versa, i mean do i have to belive every word to be a good writer, if i am confused and write a peice of advocacy, am i a hypocrite- am i being honest to my audience ? )

working on another fag peice- this time comparing the recent outing of our anon. ball player and the "gay marriage" of the two wrestlers. its all about the autehnticity of idenity compared with the politics of spectacle, it aint gonna fly at the gateway, anyone want it ?

btw, nath and mark both like my blog-which makes me feel stupid, because all it is is self indulgent ranting-come here you two and give me mad hugglez-yes thats a word.

Went to john’s church on Monday, after not going to bed on Sunday night, johns church is the evangelical one.

Go in and its lit like Vegas, praise band playing loud- sound check etc.

Start up, singing dancing praying the usual stuff.

Sermon from a preacher in Velasquez- wanted volunteers to go up to the front, and I want up. Object Lesson about Matthew 25:6 (speaking of which that chapter is my favorite in the gospels)- for those w/o bibles in hand its the one about talents, anyways, it was a cute lesson, sat down his cadence got stronger and my heart got weaker, I cried and I felt like I was losing control- he asked after praying over the congregation if anyone wanted to be blessed- disappointed I missed the altar call last week went up, got up waited in line- this pastor (Greg-first names only, his wife’s name is Linda. ) blessed me, told me I was a man of great worth, told me I was a five talent man, told me god loved me, told me that I would be great in the eyes of the lord my knees buckled and I collapsed, laying on the floor, hearing nothing, though I know the band was still playing, seeing nothing.


I got up and went back to my seat and sit and thought.




I had been up 18 hours at that point, everyone was being blessed- and it was a time of great emotion- everyone I think felt the same way, or I thought they did- anyways fall always makes me worried about God and introspective


Later that night I got a ride home from one of johns friends, and he like john asked the money question (he also asked a dozen other questions that were frankly none of his business, but I answered them and the money question bothers me the most, you know where do you get yr cash sort of thing) I don’t talk about money, it wasn’t done in my house- john asked the question too.

(Side note- I think john is uncomfortable with me- maybe it’s the gay thing, maybe it’s the two faced thing, I look two faced to some people, I struggle with a multitude of situations and am never sure of a solution, many possibilities entertained at the same time, it may also be finances)

Earlier in the day I met a handsome man at a record store, a man I want to sleep with desperately, and gave him mix cads- we met a week earlier and I was telling him all about Scott Walker and momus- not sure if he's queer maybe a bit too forward- he told me about his coke dealing brother and his divorced parents though- * shrug *

So that’s my life, men I want to sleep with in the afternoon and Jesus is lord type in the evening.