A crackhead is staggering down my block
Someone else's memories
Thanks for reading!
This form of storytelling is something I’ve been working on. Much of what I find compelling in art is the more subtle imperfections and ambiguities. Where you are in fact presented with a perspective, but the feeling you’re left with is more the essence than any single didactic message. So, a large part of me doesn’t even want to include this afterword!
However, just to tee things up for the next few weeks, I will say these same patterns of compelling ambiguity and imperfection exist outside of museums and novels too. They can be found in, or constructed using, samples of moments from our lives and the lives of others.1 I will be exploring these ideas and forms more over the coming weeks in a series called “Other people’s memories”.
But for now, please feel free to hit the ❤️ so more people can find it on Substack. And do let me know what you think in the comments!
You might say beauty is hiding everywhere.
Genre is one of the most important concepts for my work, though I don't address it directly enough as I should. As I am an ancient, let me note this:. Your work has, in the best sense, a very seventies avant guard vibe for me. Street art, found art, all that... Of course your content and your eye are of this moment. Still, I am thinking of the old greats around La Mama, the Lower East Side theater of that time, where we all hung out, Judith Malina, founder of The Living Theater, etc. Carolyn Fourche, who I think has a new memoir out you might follow. Any of these once august names familiar to you??? An entirely different reference point might be Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, a great project unevenly realized. But I am going to enjoy watching you unfold all this.
Like the form a lot. It seems like a kind of genre. Subscribing!!!