OK. I know it's been a while. I've been running around all over the city meeting with people, interviewing, visiting. I went to Roosevelt Island and met with Eddie for a long time. It was so intense. I think I'm going to Riker's this week. That's just the beginning of the story.
More soon. In the meantime, thinking about this term:
THE GLASS SEA
this is the name for the area surrounding Fort Jay, which is basically the killing zone.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
April 14, 2010
It is fucking freezing out here! That’s about all I can think of right now.
Well, the other thing is the frustration of communication. Getting in touch with the mythical Eddie, who should be the easiest to reach, has been so hard. The idea with this piece is to call people interned on other islands and ask them to describe their lives and living/working spaces to me. And to use the audio recordings from these conversations in the piece. Maybe. Well, that's the beginning part of the idea. The idea is a lot more than that, but that's what I need to do right now. So:
First: I couldn’t get an audio line out of my cell phone. Then I could, then it didn’t work, then it did. Then my computer crashed. Then it turned on again. Then I couldn’t call because cell service is so bad out there. That was last week.
Then: I got a new jack, which should work. But it seems to mute my mic and only take the sound of whoever is speaking to me, not of me speaking as well. I tried to test it out by calling K, but her phone is broken and kept disconnecting. I tried calling Y but got voicemail, and she never called back. There’s no one else I can just call and test things on. Either my calling is way too loaded, or we don’t know each other well enough. Or both. That was last weekend and Monday.
Then: I figured the safest thing is just to build a contact mic and attach it to the speaker. This works. So. Then I tried to call Eddie. Except, oh yeah, cell phone service out here is terrible. I think all those helicopters don’t help. So I called and called. Then I finally got through and the operator said she wouldn’t connect me without his birthdate or social security number. So, I called Katy to get this info, except, her phone sucks. She texted it to me, but I was already back in Manhattan. That was Monday.
Then: I tried again today. The mic works, I have the numbers. Her text gives his birthdate, his room, and then says “don’t say who u r.” So I call. And again no cell service. And again. And again. I finally think I found a sweet spot in my studio where there is a signal, and I’m still attached to the cables into my laptop. I marked a big X there with tape. Last week, I marked off a 6 ft x 9 ft area that is the size of a Riker’s Island prison cell, I believe. Or my imagination of its dimensions based on my research. The X is about 2 ft away from the imaginary cell. So I called from there and got through. I just asked for his room and this operator tried to transfer me, but said it’s busy and I should call back in 10 minutes. K said it might take a few tries because all they have is one pay phone for all these guys.
In the meantime, I’m writing this. It’s occurred to me that I should just go on over there and visit, but I am not sure if that’s the point of the piece. Maybe the experience of the frustration of isolation and jilted communication is part of it. What I think is part of it is the talking, describing, and imagining that I am hoping to create through a phone call. We’ll see where this goes. Right now, my piece is a bunch of tape marks on the floor and a series of dropped cell phone calls.
Well, the other thing is the frustration of communication. Getting in touch with the mythical Eddie, who should be the easiest to reach, has been so hard. The idea with this piece is to call people interned on other islands and ask them to describe their lives and living/working spaces to me. And to use the audio recordings from these conversations in the piece. Maybe. Well, that's the beginning part of the idea. The idea is a lot more than that, but that's what I need to do right now. So:
First: I couldn’t get an audio line out of my cell phone. Then I could, then it didn’t work, then it did. Then my computer crashed. Then it turned on again. Then I couldn’t call because cell service is so bad out there. That was last week.
Then: I got a new jack, which should work. But it seems to mute my mic and only take the sound of whoever is speaking to me, not of me speaking as well. I tried to test it out by calling K, but her phone is broken and kept disconnecting. I tried calling Y but got voicemail, and she never called back. There’s no one else I can just call and test things on. Either my calling is way too loaded, or we don’t know each other well enough. Or both. That was last weekend and Monday.
Then: I figured the safest thing is just to build a contact mic and attach it to the speaker. This works. So. Then I tried to call Eddie. Except, oh yeah, cell phone service out here is terrible. I think all those helicopters don’t help. So I called and called. Then I finally got through and the operator said she wouldn’t connect me without his birthdate or social security number. So, I called Katy to get this info, except, her phone sucks. She texted it to me, but I was already back in Manhattan. That was Monday.
Then: I tried again today. The mic works, I have the numbers. Her text gives his birthdate, his room, and then says “don’t say who u r.” So I call. And again no cell service. And again. And again. I finally think I found a sweet spot in my studio where there is a signal, and I’m still attached to the cables into my laptop. I marked a big X there with tape. Last week, I marked off a 6 ft x 9 ft area that is the size of a Riker’s Island prison cell, I believe. Or my imagination of its dimensions based on my research. The X is about 2 ft away from the imaginary cell. So I called from there and got through. I just asked for his room and this operator tried to transfer me, but said it’s busy and I should call back in 10 minutes. K said it might take a few tries because all they have is one pay phone for all these guys.
In the meantime, I’m writing this. It’s occurred to me that I should just go on over there and visit, but I am not sure if that’s the point of the piece. Maybe the experience of the frustration of isolation and jilted communication is part of it. What I think is part of it is the talking, describing, and imagining that I am hoping to create through a phone call. We’ll see where this goes. Right now, my piece is a bunch of tape marks on the floor and a series of dropped cell phone calls.
Monday, April 12, 2010
April 12, 2010
Today is better. I stopped writing for a little bit because that last post just seemed way too over-the-top. It reminded me of why I stopped writing altogether, when I was in college and “studying” creative writing. It was too self-indulgent – or too revealing – or too subjective. It’s funny what can happen if you have no audience, and what can happen if you’re not sure you have audience.
I want to make this quick because I really want to call Eddie today. It’s been a comedy of errors getting things working so that I can record a phone conversation on my cell phone. Seems like it shouldn’t be that hard, but it is … I think I’m just going to solder up a contact mic and use that – I’ve heard that works. We’ll see. I’m ready, though. I really want to start talking. I think I’m learning a little from S and other journalists I have known – there’s a sense of entitlement or “end justifies the means” or just plain boldness that allows them to pursue an interview. I don’t have it, but I’m trying to fake it a little.
I loved the ride out here today. I almost always do. And I’m noticing how many of the wonderful things in my life right now involve crossing bodies of water, or just water in general. I regularly run from my house, across the hood, and across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey, and back. I love this run – I did it last night and it was sooo dark. There’s something so freeing about crossing the river and then returning. It gives perspective, makes me love New York from the outside again, and also lets me feel like I can escape. It makes me realize how close a different world is. It also keeps me running, because I can’t really just wimp out and stop in the middle of the bridge or in another state. Also, baths. I love taking baths.
And then I was watching the water through a hole in the boards along the dock as we were docking. It moves though and around – the fences and boards don’t really contain it at all. It reminded me of the way sound moves – though and around walls – and about my thoughts about how the medium, in that respect, is sort of naturally in the public realm. Water, similarly, is impossible to own.
I’m still obsessed with this Foucault. He is talking now about hysteria and hypochondria. In the 18th century, he says, hysteria was attributed to having an overly fluid body, a body in which the parts could move around, that was not “solid” enough. Eventually this was transmuted into the idea that the body was overly sympathetic, that the vibrations of the nervous system created sympathetic vibrations throughout the body, causing the person (woman) to feel things more extremely:
“Simon-Andre Tissot conceived this double function of one and the same fiber as the combination of an undulatory movement for voluntary stimulus (“this is the movement of a fluid enclosed in a malleable container, in a bladder, for example, that when I press it would eject liquid through a tube”) and a corpuscular movement for sensation (“this is the movement of a succession of ivory balls”). Thus sensation and movement can be produced at the same time in the same nerve: any tension and any relation in the fiber will alter both movements and sensations, as we can observe in all nervous diseases.”
S and I were walking in Riverside Park on that path along the Hudson River yesterday morning and there was a big huddling of police cars along the riverbank. They had found a dead body floating downstream. The ME was slow to come. That night, the body still hadn’t been identified. S says a body in the water usually means a suicide or a mob hit. The water carries, removes, displaces, decontexualizes, and washes away a lot of information.
I want to make this quick because I really want to call Eddie today. It’s been a comedy of errors getting things working so that I can record a phone conversation on my cell phone. Seems like it shouldn’t be that hard, but it is … I think I’m just going to solder up a contact mic and use that – I’ve heard that works. We’ll see. I’m ready, though. I really want to start talking. I think I’m learning a little from S and other journalists I have known – there’s a sense of entitlement or “end justifies the means” or just plain boldness that allows them to pursue an interview. I don’t have it, but I’m trying to fake it a little.
I loved the ride out here today. I almost always do. And I’m noticing how many of the wonderful things in my life right now involve crossing bodies of water, or just water in general. I regularly run from my house, across the hood, and across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey, and back. I love this run – I did it last night and it was sooo dark. There’s something so freeing about crossing the river and then returning. It gives perspective, makes me love New York from the outside again, and also lets me feel like I can escape. It makes me realize how close a different world is. It also keeps me running, because I can’t really just wimp out and stop in the middle of the bridge or in another state. Also, baths. I love taking baths.
And then I was watching the water through a hole in the boards along the dock as we were docking. It moves though and around – the fences and boards don’t really contain it at all. It reminded me of the way sound moves – though and around walls – and about my thoughts about how the medium, in that respect, is sort of naturally in the public realm. Water, similarly, is impossible to own.
I’m still obsessed with this Foucault. He is talking now about hysteria and hypochondria. In the 18th century, he says, hysteria was attributed to having an overly fluid body, a body in which the parts could move around, that was not “solid” enough. Eventually this was transmuted into the idea that the body was overly sympathetic, that the vibrations of the nervous system created sympathetic vibrations throughout the body, causing the person (woman) to feel things more extremely:
“Simon-Andre Tissot conceived this double function of one and the same fiber as the combination of an undulatory movement for voluntary stimulus (“this is the movement of a fluid enclosed in a malleable container, in a bladder, for example, that when I press it would eject liquid through a tube”) and a corpuscular movement for sensation (“this is the movement of a succession of ivory balls”). Thus sensation and movement can be produced at the same time in the same nerve: any tension and any relation in the fiber will alter both movements and sensations, as we can observe in all nervous diseases.”
S and I were walking in Riverside Park on that path along the Hudson River yesterday morning and there was a big huddling of police cars along the riverbank. They had found a dead body floating downstream. The ME was slow to come. That night, the body still hadn’t been identified. S says a body in the water usually means a suicide or a mob hit. The water carries, removes, displaces, decontexualizes, and washes away a lot of information.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
April 7, 2010
It’s another beautiful day. And I am thinking about how A. likes it when I write. Or at least, he seems to approve. I am so lonely right now, feel so cast aside myself, that I think I am seeking the feeling of collaboration or partnership anywhere. I just want someone to be monitoring me. Someone other than me. Someone to know what’s going on, and to care. Sometimes it seems like all my efforts are so small, especially because I am very alone in them. It’s enough to deflate you a little. I guess that’s why we need all these institutional structures of approval. But those are so empty without real connections, real investment. It’s a strange thing, to feel like I need to keep myself alone, protected, solo, in order to think clearly, to see the trajectory of the authorship of my work and my life, and yet to know that maybe it doesn’t mean anything to anyone.
I screamed this morning, in frustration, the loudest scream I have ever screamed. It was totally uninhibited, I just let it out. It hurt my throat. But what an amazing feeling – it just vibrates your whole body and you know when it’s done and it has all come out of you. I think that was the best part of it – just to know it was all fully out of me and finished – one long complete thorough scream that used all my air.
So now I’m out here, and I feel kinda tired. I don’t think I’m sleeping enough, or properly. There’s no one to put me to bed, and there’s always so much work to do. I’m aware of this tendency of mine and I know I have to combat it, be very ritualistic about letting go and shutting down.
There is one little spot outside my window that always makes waves. There must be something under the water there causing a rift. I can actually hear the waves sometimes, over the buzzing of the fans in the studio. I think I want to video it, and take some audio. Maybe I’ll do that next.
I have to call Eddie on Roosevelt Island. I’ve been putting it off. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I think will go wrong. I’m just scared, or shy. Or lazy. I’m afraid to bring another person into this.
I screamed this morning, in frustration, the loudest scream I have ever screamed. It was totally uninhibited, I just let it out. It hurt my throat. But what an amazing feeling – it just vibrates your whole body and you know when it’s done and it has all come out of you. I think that was the best part of it – just to know it was all fully out of me and finished – one long complete thorough scream that used all my air.
So now I’m out here, and I feel kinda tired. I don’t think I’m sleeping enough, or properly. There’s no one to put me to bed, and there’s always so much work to do. I’m aware of this tendency of mine and I know I have to combat it, be very ritualistic about letting go and shutting down.
There is one little spot outside my window that always makes waves. There must be something under the water there causing a rift. I can actually hear the waves sometimes, over the buzzing of the fans in the studio. I think I want to video it, and take some audio. Maybe I’ll do that next.
I have to call Eddie on Roosevelt Island. I’ve been putting it off. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I think will go wrong. I’m just scared, or shy. Or lazy. I’m afraid to bring another person into this.
Friday, April 2, 2010
April 2, 2010
It's absurdly beautiful today. It's one of those first spring days when everything is beautiful, everything is perfect, it's just a miracle, and people are wearing shorts prematurely. Everything is very, very clear and crisp. No clouds. I'm romantic about the twinkling caused by the sunlight reflecting off the cars driving across the Brooklyn Bridge. You see what I mean? Ridiculous.
I've decided that I'm not really having an experience of confinement out here at all. It's more like an island retreat. So, I'm very lucky. I think the closest experience I've had to feeling trapped is the subway. The FUCKING subway. I took the 1 down today and it was one of those rides when they stop it for about five minutes before every other station. We spent more time "being held by supervision" than actually getting places. What does that mean:
WE ARE BEING HELD BY SUPER VISION
?
I think I'm going to get all metaphorical on your ass now. We are held by our visions, we are held prisoner by the extent of our visions, we are confined by both the limits of our vision and our ambition to have a greater vision.
Yup. Metaphor. Either that or I am spending way too much time on the subway.
Speaking of vision, there's a little sailboat going by my window. It's quaint. It looks like the kind of thing you'd put in a bathtub, except person-sized. But compared to the ferries and water taxis and helicopters and downtown Manhattan, it looks like a toy.
I'm thinking about scale a lot today, and motion. One of my students took me to see an installation he had just made yesterday. It sort of blew my mind. And it was about those things: scale, models, the earth, man-made creations, projections, vision and perspective, silence and slow time. He is a rock climber and we talked about plate tectonics, instability, and the fact that we're just very very slowly floating around on hot liquid all the time.
By the way, what happens when you drill into the mantle? I know nothing about this stuff, but it seems like all these punctures can't be good. He's also a ceramicist. And now I'm thinking about that Keats poem (Ode to a Grecian Urn) and looking at this crazy man-made sandy beach outside my window and making associations. Earth, clay, crust, heat, cracking, subterranean motion, water, the frozen moment.
There is a Lawrence Weiner piece painted on the wood of the Governors Island Ferry dock in Manhattan. It reads: AT THE SAME MOMENT.
I've decided that I'm not really having an experience of confinement out here at all. It's more like an island retreat. So, I'm very lucky. I think the closest experience I've had to feeling trapped is the subway. The FUCKING subway. I took the 1 down today and it was one of those rides when they stop it for about five minutes before every other station. We spent more time "being held by supervision" than actually getting places. What does that mean:
WE ARE BEING HELD BY SUPER VISION
?
I think I'm going to get all metaphorical on your ass now. We are held by our visions, we are held prisoner by the extent of our visions, we are confined by both the limits of our vision and our ambition to have a greater vision.
Yup. Metaphor. Either that or I am spending way too much time on the subway.
Speaking of vision, there's a little sailboat going by my window. It's quaint. It looks like the kind of thing you'd put in a bathtub, except person-sized. But compared to the ferries and water taxis and helicopters and downtown Manhattan, it looks like a toy.
I'm thinking about scale a lot today, and motion. One of my students took me to see an installation he had just made yesterday. It sort of blew my mind. And it was about those things: scale, models, the earth, man-made creations, projections, vision and perspective, silence and slow time. He is a rock climber and we talked about plate tectonics, instability, and the fact that we're just very very slowly floating around on hot liquid all the time.
By the way, what happens when you drill into the mantle? I know nothing about this stuff, but it seems like all these punctures can't be good. He's also a ceramicist. And now I'm thinking about that Keats poem (Ode to a Grecian Urn) and looking at this crazy man-made sandy beach outside my window and making associations. Earth, clay, crust, heat, cracking, subterranean motion, water, the frozen moment.
There is a Lawrence Weiner piece painted on the wood of the Governors Island Ferry dock in Manhattan. It reads: AT THE SAME MOMENT.
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