p.s. Hey. ** anthony van den bossche, Hello, welcome. Wow, thank you very, very much! That’s amazing. Of course, I’m very happy to do the interview. You can contact me by email if you like — [email protected]. That is some heavy competition there. Anyway, yes, I’m honored, and thank you tremendously again. ** Nasir, Hey, Nasir. It could be argued that a belated b’day greeting is even better than a timely one. Thank you, in other words. Seinfeld + Melvins = wow. I may try that. My day was, hm, not bad, not hugely eventful, which was actually kind of refreshing. Today things should pick up. What’s up otherwise with you, writing-wise or anything? ** ellie, Aw, thanks, ellie. Huh, that Jean Echenoz quote about Februaries is quite intriguing. I confess I’ve never let my brain go in that direction about that month, but it’s such a curious idea, that I will. So, I hope it’s true. When’s your birthday? ** Dominik, Hi!!! Cool, glad you liked it/him. No, double broken wrists is most inconvenient to say the least. Beyond just no writing, no blog making, etc., but even eating and using the restroom are no longer solo activities. I mean, you know, yikes. If you ever fall flat on your face, try to remember not to use both hands to try to catch yourself. That’s the rule, I guess. I hope love solved that in-between state, and ideally towards the going away side, although a good cry can be the best thing, I think, no? Love making the road extremely safe the next time you’re in a car, G. ** Black_Acrylic, I only just noticed you got rid of the first “_”. I think I remember reading about the Yorkshire Ripper. The UK had so many rippers there for a while. LA did too, actually. Hm, maybe I can illegally watch that mini-series, let me find out. Are your stickers in-house yet? ** Misanthrope, Wait, so you’re going to be over here from April to July? Or you’re going to cross the Atlantic three times in the course of several months? Either way, how deliciously decadent. ** Charalampos, Hi. I think his artwork is interesting. Well, I guess I wouldn’t have blogged it if I didn’t. I don’t think I have a favorite, I’m just interested in general. You? Cold here too. Supposed to be less cold next week, here, at least. Everyone, Charalampos has a new poem of his that’s newly published for you to read should you care to, and it’s here. Heat from Paris. ** Bill, Hi. Yes, I’m brand new to his work too. Just discovered it not even a week and a half ago. Thanks about the post-p’s hopeful smoothness, not to mention it happening at all. God, me too, me too. ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff! Then I’m guessing the surgery went as well as such a thing could go. Nice to have your hands back. Plus you. I made that Sebadoh gig that you suggested I make last week if you didn’t see it. The extra producer has hooked us up with a studio and technicians to work with, but he has provided no funds, no. We are still dependent on Fuckhead to raise the funds to use these technical gifts. We’re scheduled to start the sound mix in just over a week, and, as of now, Fuckhead has not raised a dime that would allow that to happen. So, we’re still in perpetual nail-biting mode for the moment. Use your magical but limited hands wisely. ** Minet, Hi. Yay, yes, ‘Eternal Darkness’, so amazing. I remain totally bewildered by why no one has continued/furthered that particular way of making players play games. Singular. Gosh, thank you so, so much for the amazing words about ‘God Jr.’. I agree with you that’s still a very ‘me’ novel. It’s weird how content can blind people. I did read some game theory books when I was working on it. I’m blanking on the names, and they’re in LA, so I can’t check my bookshelf. If I can remember, I’ll pass them on. I was really into studying Game Guides at the time. You know, those illustrated books they used to publish for most games with guided walkthroughs and puzzle solving clues and things. At one point I wanted to write a novel that would be in the form of one those game guide books, but I didn’t. Very exciting about the near completion of your short fiction collection! Obviously I’m way down with you writing more English stuff, very selfishly. And you are awfully adept with English obviously. But, first things first, finish your collection. Awesome. And I’ll hopefully finish the film while you’re doing that. ** T, Hey! Maybe Saturday after 18h. Let’s email. I’m a bit of a slave to a bunch of unexpected things to do with the upcoming film work that keep popping up at the moment, But, yeah, then or ASAP. Glad you liked his stuff. Curious, right? Soon, soon, my friend. ** Steve Erickson, No, I only discovered his work very recently. In fact, I discovered it due to a show of his work that’s up in NYC right now until mid-February at The Drawing Center. Here, if you’re interested in checking it out. Two very interesting review subjects there. I’ll hit the link. Everyone, Steve has reviews of two re-releases: Lou Reed’s final solo album HUDSON RIVER WIND MEDITATIONS, here, and of the 1982 James Baldwin documentary I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE, here. I haven’t heard the Lou Reed yet. I have to do that. CRITICAL ZONE sounds extremely interesting. I’ll look for it, for sure. Thanks! ** Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. No big, great to see you. I’m good. I have some kind of pinched nerve or something in my leg, which is obnoxious, but I’m good otherwise. Seen anything exciting lately? You take care too. ** seb 🦠, Hey. Ha ha, that might be the best one, actually. The video. Cats … I think they’re impressive. I’m not a pet person. I’ve never owned a cat. I had dogs growing up but they died young, and I stopped that practice. Cats seem more doable, but dogs are so soulful, so I think they interest me more. You a cat guy then? More than one? I don’t think I could handle the routine/responsibility part of having a pet. I think it would weigh on me. My building has mice, so there’s often a mouse running around in my apartment at night. I can sort of handle that. You’re an hour earlier, I think. Yeah, I think so. 71, yes, that’s the case. No, no depression, I don’t care. I really almost never get depressed. I don’t think I even know what that feels like so maybe I am and just haven’t given it a name. That does sound like a good reason to be sore and wounded, if there is one. I haven’t been in a pit since an Ice Age show here back when they were harsh. Good tidings has a charm to it. Godspeed is more punk, I guess. Which gives it a leg up, I guess. Sounds like you probably need balm more than anything, so take that. ** alex, Hi. Pretty surely not devout, I think. One of these days his wife, who controls all of his things with an iron fist, will die and maybe we’ll find out. Thanks, yeah, the leg pain is fucking annoying. I can walk and everything. But sitting sucks. I think I need a new desk chair. Happy you were made so happy by the Haring show. My friend the writer Brad Gooch has a Haring biography coming out any second that I suspect is going to be very good. ** Matt N., Hi, Matt! My birthday was very quiet with a shortish hangout with close friends and a meal of my favorite food cold sesame noodle that a friend made for me and listening to some music I like especially and … that’s it? I think that’s it. No, I don’t believe I even knew about that book ‘Late Bresson and The Visual Arts’, which is rather crazy. No, but I will absolutely get it. Very interesting. How are you? Tell anything if you want. ** Mark, I’m so happy it sat well with you. His work, I mean. ‘My War’ live sounds pretty ace. But who’s singing it? I can find out, never mind. Big luck with the ‘Stroke’ shoot, naturally. ** Даrву🐦⬛, Hi, D, or, rather, Д. I’m really happy you liked his work. I will look it up. ‘Amazing’ is enough for me. So sorry that the sadness swept over you. Kindness is a really important thing to remember and think about. I realised at some point recently that kind of the only thing that makes me cry when I watch movies is when characters in them do or say something very kind. Strange, that. My great friend George Miles was obsessed with Nick Drake. It’s still really hard for me to listen to him. Oh, I meant like a place out of state that doesn’t need a passport to enter, or … maybe every place needs one now. I don’t know. Anyway, never mind. I liked the typos. I probably didn’t even see them. I like experimental writing, you know. Happy day for you, I hope. ** Bernard Welt, Hi, B. Yes, it was completely adequate. It had no missing parts. Well, then hook me up with the podcast at the very least. Folio. I read there, didn’t I? With Tim Dlugos. I think that’s where/when I encountered the literature influencing (for me) but dislikable (for you) Mark Lewis. But I could be wrong. In any case, I’m excited to hear you talk about that series/place. No, I didn’t know you saw Michael Lally. I heard his health was beset, but I didn’t know why. Ugh. Love, me. ** 2Moody, Well, then you should get into it, no? Sketching, etc? You had a fantastic birthday meal on my behalf, I very highly approve. Oh god, I miss great Mexican food, sigh. Wow, fascinating, the shit-influencing lengthy chat with a stranger (?). Did it resolve identity issues in the end? Updates, yes, bated breath. ** Corey Heiferman, I’m very, very pleased that the discovery of his work is so fruitful. Weekend? Well, if I include today, I’m seeing/meeting the writer (and sometimes commenter) Golnoosh Nour, who’s visiting from London, for a coffee and a bookstore (After8) visit. And I have a film-related Zoom. And tomorrow I might meet with a friend, and I will Zoom with the great writer and editor (of Soho Press) Mark Doten in his newish home in Mexico City. And on Sunday I will maybe see the new Frederick Weissman film and start the very final editing of our film, which has to be locked down in the next several days. And eat things. And smoke a fair amount of cigarettes. What do you anticipate yours involving, or I guess you’re in the midst of it, so what’s happening all around you right now? A flâneur-themed day? In what sense? I don’t think so, no, so, yes, add it to your list, if you like. Thanks, bud. ** Uday, Hi, Uday! Warmest welcome to the inside of here. No, your thoughts drifting to Genet are most appropriate, I think. I’m there with you. Gosh, don’t feel inadequate. You’ve already totally proven that you are not. In other words, I’d be happy to confer with you here and get to know you if you feel like it. What’s going on with you? ** Okay. Today I give you something to scroll through and look at, ideally with some form of pleasure. See you tomorrow.
‘To understand the Belgian artist Stéphane Mandelbaum, it is best to begin at the end of his life. Few agree on how he lived, but most agree on how he died. It was garish and violent. He was shot in Namur, in central Belgium. Acid was splashed on his face to make his body harder to identify. His corpse was thrown into a landfill. He was twenty-five years old. His bright, brief life and his art-brut style are often compared to those of Jean-Michel Basquiat, but whereas Basquiat found his way to the center of the art world, Mandelbaum was always an outsider. His life was a mixture of realities and self-imposed fictions that were so potent that even he forgot who he was. At the crucial moment of his death, Mandelbaum thought he was a hardened criminal when, in truth, he was closer to a doughy artist, a controversial but ultimately bashful poet of the visual.
‘His death came in December 1986 when he had attempted to steal a painting by Amedeo Modigliani called The Woman with the Cameo from an elderly woman’s home in Ixelles, a tony suburb of Brussels, along an avenue studded with art deco buildings. He had been promised money for the painting from friends who had connections to the black market. Having made almost no money from selling his own art, which was largely deemed too perverse and risqué, he desperately needed the funds. The problem was that there is no such painting by Modigliani called The Woman with the Cameo. What he stole was entirely fake. It is impossible to know whether Mandelbaum was aware of this or not—or whether or not the woman who owned it knew—but, when he turned it over, his buyers realized the truth and murdered him. That is, at least, the most agreed upon story. Almost nothing about Mandelbaum is certain.
The recent Mandelbaum retrospective in the tucked-away gallery of graphic art in Paris’ Centre Pompidou was preceded by a series of warnings that the exhibition was particularly vulgar and violent. It was composed of about a hundred of his works, most of them works on paper, done in ballpoint pen, charcoal, and colored pencil. The exhibition was a rarity: never before had he been given a major museum show. And for good reason: Mandelbaum was a curator and historian’s nightmare. Sorting through what is true and what his false about Mandelbaum is an enormous challenge. Even in his own diaries he lied about what he had done, claiming, for instance, that he had frequented a prostitute who never lived, and that he had robbed a home on a street where no such home exists.
‘Mandelbaum was born in Brussels in 1961. He was diagnosed as dyslexic as a boy, so his parents enrolled him in an alternative boarding school, from which he came home only on weekends. Learning to write was difficult, and he turned to drawing as an easier means of expression. His drawings frequently incorporated writing, though, and like Basquiat, the text was often riddled with spelling errors, both intentional and unintentional. At sixteen, he began studying at the Academy Fine Arts De Watermael-Boitsfort, where he began to draw more pornographic works. He called his notebook “my pigsty.” He began training in combat sports, dressing more sharply, and drawing increasingly sexualized figures.
‘In 1979, he transferred to the School of Plastic and Visual Arts in Uccle, where his style developed further. He became focused on tragic histories, mediated through the comic and the outrageous. He drew mostly profiles. In one of his best, “Der Goebbels,” from 1980, he drew Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. Mandelbaum depicted him with great strength and heft but also as evil: his eyes dark with charcoal, his fists clenched and raised. He is yelling something. From his mouth come white circles, like a comic-strip balloon. The features are exacting—Goebbels’s hairline is receding slightly but perfectly combed, his face shadowed ominously. His teeth are invisible, his mouth open wide. Whatever he is saying—the bubble is left blank—is of great power and importance. Mandelbaum used white space to depict the historical void. His drawings are so packed with words and precise details that these blank expanses become all the more powerful. In another drawing, also from 1980, called “Composition (Portrait of Bacon),” which he drew using ballpoint and felt pens, he depicted various angles of Francis Bacon, whom he greatly admired, leaving white space only in the top left corner. The rest of the work is full of images of Bacon as well as versions of figures Bacon had drawn, done in Mandelbaum’s sickly, pornographic style, which evokes Egon Schiele. Mandelbaum drew words within words. He wrote “FOU” (meaning “crazy”) creating the shape of the letters with words that describe the colors Bacon favored (“blanc, rouge, vert”). Other words scattered throughout the drawing seem to track a shifting set of feelings. “Vive la vie” (“Live life”), he writes; then, in enormous lettering: “Salope” (“Bitch”). One imagines the white space he leaves to soon be filled by new, spontaneous feelings and emotions: fresh views of Bacon, his own latest thoughts and frustrations.
‘Mandelbaum’s art gives the impression of constant motion—the shifting feelings of a single work jumble together and on top of each other. This might be why he so quickly gave up on engraving (of which there are several examples in the Pompidou show), favoring the ease and speed of drawing instead. In the period between 1980 and his death in 1985, Mandelbaum saw a huge amount of art in Brussels, reading widely, especially on Japanese art and Jewish history, and worked tirelessly, often sleeping for only a few hours each night. Between 1980 and 1982 especially, he created the vast majority of his oeuvre, what would ultimately be his legacy.
‘It’s frankly difficult to judge the life and works of an artist who lived to only twenty-five. His interests jumped between exotic Japanese images of octopuses performing cunnilingus to faux-fawning depictions of Nazis. But his interest ultimately centered on outsiders: thugs, war criminals, artists intrigued by the perverse and unaccepted, like Arthur Rimbaud and Pier Paolo Pasolini. In 1980, he drew a profile of Pasolini, perhaps sensing a similarity between himself and the Italian director who was both gay and known for directing perhaps the most grotesque film of all time, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, an updated version of the Marquis de Sade’s libertine classic. Next to his drawing of Pasolini, Mandelbaum pasted a small picture of Christ, blood streaming from his chest, a winged cherub on his back. In the style of Pasolini’s films, Mandelbaum perverted this image, pasting another small cutout of an uncircumcised penis over Christ’s waist. In another drawing, from 1983, called “Dream of Auschwitz,” Mandelbaum depicted an erect penis next to the gates of the camp; in another, from 1982, “Kischmatores: Portrait of Arié Mandelbaum,” he drew a black-and-white image of his father, Arié—a known painter and art teacher—above a colorful picture of a Nazi officer. In one of his most disturbing works, “The Nazi, Saint Nicholas, the Brothers, and the Grandmother,” from 1978, he painted his family portrait but gave himself, as a boy, a yellow Star of David and added in a Nazi officer and the Catholic bishop St. Nicholas standing next to his family.
‘Mandelbaum’s art was about these kinds of additions—a penis to Christ, a Nazi general to his family portrait. These things existed—Christ had genitalia; Mandelbaum’s Jewish family had been persecuted—but they had also been buried, whether out of decorum or grief. Mandelbaum, however, saw it as his artistic task to dredge up everything. His desire to depict the people he most admired was not just about veneration but about testing his own versions of himself against those he most respected. In the case of Bacon, Anne Montfort, the exhibition’s curator, writes in one of the catalog essays, “These, however, exceed simple homage because they offer the artist the opportunity to measure himself against the British painter.”
‘In 1985, Mandelbaum had his first two exhibitions, one at the Galerie Hugo Godderis in Furnes, in northwest Belgium, and then, later in the year, one at the Galerie Christine Colmant in Brussels, the latter of which he dedicated to his father (and also to an infamous pimp and sex trafficker whom he had never met). In these shows the year before his death, his works start to enter into a kind of crossover genre that had already begun to define his life: a mix of truth and untruth. The transgression was less about any kind of particular crudity than it was about creating a transgressive, shifting identity. Around this time, he had fallen in with the Brussels underworld, at first through painting their portraits, and then through living their lifestyles. He spent time with thugs in the then-shady Brussels neighborhood of Matonge, stole a series of netsuke statuettes, assaulted and robbed a car collector. In 1986, he went to Zaire, to visit the childhood home of his wife, Claudia. The real intention of the trip, however, was to illegally traffic rare African artifacts back to Belgium and to sell them to collectors on the black market. On October 12 of that year, he stole the fake Modigliani. It was almost as if he couldn’t help translating the transgressive nature of his art to his own life.
‘The process of self-creation is a fundamental one to art. Mandelbaum sliced his entire mode of being into distinct contradictions. He came from a Jewish family, but he drew and painted fetishized images of handsome Nazi generals. His sexuality was uncertain, but he was married to a woman, and his artworks abounded with a rejection of these truths: “fucking Jew,” “fucking gay Jew”—these words scrawled largely and crudely behind small figures of painters and poets he admired. He was not a criminal when he began to paint portraits of prostitutes, thugs, pimps, and gambling bosses, but perhaps they led him to become one. He bragged of robberies he had never committed—until he began to commit robberies. He created a self that did not exist until it did. In January 1987, children discovered his body—his face chemically disfigured, two bullets in his skull. His life took the shape of a myth, the distance between truth and fiction still nearly impossible to parse.’ — Cody Delistraty
LA SAINTETE STEPHANE, un documentaire de Gérard Preszow
___________
___ Show
Mishima
Composition (Portrait of Bacon), 1980
Der Goebbels, 1980
Pier Paolo Pasolini (with the Pietà d’Antonello dof Messine, 1477-1478), 1980
Autoportrait, 1980
Arthur Rimbaud, 1980
Bic, 1980
Pierre and Jose, 1985
June, 1981
Rainer, 1982
Turk, 1980
Ernst Rohm, 1981
P. de Max, 1984
Die Portrait von Kafka, 1985
Pasolini, 1980
L’Empire des Sens, 1983
Francis Bacon II, 1981
Composition (Masque), 1983
Bar, 1983
Double Autoportrait, 1984
Goebbels, 1980
Viens dans mon… Dessin au stylo bille, 1983
Etalon, 1980
Untitled (Cartes Postale), 1985
Composition (mask figure), 1981
Autoportait, 1983
Untitled, 1985-86
Pasolini III, 1981
Mazel-tov, 1983
A. Rimbaud, 1980
Sans titre, 1976
Untitled, 1982
Quartier de plaisir, 1984
Autoportrait, 1986
Saint Nicholas nazi, 1979
Portrait de Jose, 1984
Sans titre (Joakim Diambote), 1986
Orient, 1984
The Opium, 1987
Pollock, 1983
*
p.s. Hey. ** James Bennett, Thank you so much, James. ** tomk, Hi, bud. Thanks, man. And I did indeed eat a trough of cold sesame noodle yesterday, so you’re magic on top of everything else. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thank you. Pretty lowkey, some friends came over for a bit to celebrate or whatever. It was good. Yeah, your opinion and the opinions of a lot of people I trust have put ‘Saltburn’ in the ‘only with a gun to my hea’d category. Two broken wrists was hell on earth. Just trying to get onto the jet to fly back home with my baggage was a torture chamber, not to mention 6+ weeks of trying to live with essentially no hands. I don’t recommend it. A private GbV gig would have made my b’day perfect, thank you. Love sharing half of the cold sesame noodle that Zac made me for my birthday with you somehow, G. ** Charalampos, Thank you, sir. ** Black_Acrylic, The blog has earned its keep then. Phew on the space between you and the class, as frustrating as that delay might also be. ** Bzzt, Hey, nice to see you! Thanks. And positive vibes galore back from somewhat dreary (if you count the sky) Paris. ** Daniel, Daniel! Thank you much, maestro. I hope you’re doing absolutely splendidly. ** alex, Hi, alex! So nice to see you! Bresson was definitely Catholic growing up and all of that, but I’m not sure if he practiced, as it were, as an adult. I’m thinking … not? Excellent news about the prose poem. I had a lingering cold nonsense end of year too. And now I seem to triggered some painful nerve action in my leg, so obstacles galore. Don’t let ‘Moby Dick’ wear you out. Abandon ship if need be. Yes, please keep me up with you whenever it doesn’t interfere with you and yours. ** Steve Erickson, Thanks. Ha ha, GbV on the screens at HRC is a hell freezes over situation. Anyway, I skipped the nachos because Zac gave me cold sesame noodle, so I was spared a big dollop of Kiss and Guns ‘n’ Roses and Journey for the moment. Right, budget-less, I know that one very well. ** ellie, Hi. So happy you’re wonderful. So deserved. And thank you for the extra effort to emoji me. It upturned my lips. Have a most lovely post-my-birthday day. ** Zak Ferguson, Thank you, Zak, and thank for the Bresson paean on top of that. It’s most welcome. And of course I’m in utter agreement with you. ** Jamie, Hey, buddy! It’s been a while. So good to see you. I’m okay, still headlong in trying to finish the film mostly. Getting by. What about you, more importantly? What’s been filling your time and you? The artist up above was from Brussels coincidentally, for whatever that’s worth. Love, me. ** Tosh Berman, Hi. ‘Les anges du péché’ is before Bresson had fully found his style, but it’s still worth seeing, for sure. Zac’s and my preference for using non-actors is definitely influenced heavily by Bresson’s dictum and its results vis-a-vis the performances in his films. I think there’s also some influence from the fact that both Zac and I are extremely interesting in the documentary form. Historically, Gisele liked to work with non-actors and also non-dancers. That’s changed recently, though. Right now all of her works have been starring the actress Adele Haenel, who’s super famous here. But I haven’t been very involved in that work. Thanks, Tosh. ** Jack Skelley, Thank you, Jack! Had a really greet meet-up with LilyLady. They’re fantastic. Thank you for occasioning our convergence. xo, me ** seb 🦠, Hey. Ha ha ha, those videos are amazing. The first one sounds like a collab. between Alice in Chains and, I don’t know, Frank Zappa, and, I don’t know, Vanilla Ice? Crazy! My birthday is now complete, and the future is my oyster, all thanks to you and to EpicHappyBirthdays! xo. ** Mark, Merci Beaucoup, mecs. Well, I can’t say that my birthday was quite that spectacular, but the thought definitely counted. Thanks, you guys. It’s at the end of February? Dang, I don’t think I’ll get there until March ‘cos we have to finish the film so we can show it to the LA crew. And select friends, if you’ll be curious by then. Multi-x’s and multi-o’s, me ** fervorxo, Thank you, thank you! If they had Criterion Channel over here, I would join you. ** Bill, B’day was perfectly okay. I have yet to see a persuasive argument for why I should see ‘May December’, although yours is a pusher. It just sounds so dull. But what do I know? Nothing. Thank you, Bill. ** Sypha, Thank you very much, James. ** Montse, Yay, Montse! I’m okay. My leg hurts for some reason, but whatev’. If luck holds, we’re about to start the final post-production on the film (sound, color, VFX, make a trailer) and be finished by late March. I pray. How are you? How’s Xet and Barcelona? I heard it’s cold there like it is here but maybe not quite as cold. Lots of love to you, my great pal! ** Minet, Hey there, Minet! It’s lovely to see you, sir. Oh, yes, your literary twink obligations must be attended to, I fully understand and agree. Thank you about ‘God Jr.’. That’s so nice. People don’t talk about that novel so much. And I’m especially glad you liked the last ‘in game’ section because that’s my favorite thing I’ve ever written. Ideally, hopefully, we’re about to finally start finishing the film, ideally by mid-to-late March. So hopefully almost there. What’s your good word? Are you writing? Or …? Lots of love back to you! ** Misanthrope, Hi. Thanks. Oh, more blog weirdness. It seems so random. April, spring showers, all of that. Makes sense. Thanks, bud. ** ted, Hi, Ted! Thanks so much for coming in. New book, and so soon, great!!!! Excited! Love back from me and from the shadowy city in which I am ensconced! ** T. J., Thank you so much! ** T, Hey! Thank you, pal. Yesterday didn’t end up being what I imagined, so no galette, but we can still divide one. What’s your weekend like? And, yes, I’m going to pore over the impending crazy events with non-sold-out vibes today and let’s conquer them. ** Sarah, Thank you very, very much, Sarah! ** Josiah Morgan, I could use a hot minute. It’s polar here. No, I handpicked the birthday post. I’m not that lucky. Well, maximalist excess Bresson definitely isn’t. Au contraire, as my adopted countrymen say. Hearing my poem in your voice made that poem seem actually like something I could be proud of, so mission accomplished on my front, and thank you, dude. Yeah, I saw on FB that you were in NYC. Wild place, huh? I miss it. Thanks a lot. I hope everything you’re doing is resulting in amazingness. Seems pretty much like a given. xo. ** Matt N., Thank you, Matt, and the very same to you, now on the new year front and whenever it’s appropriate on the birthday front. ** Bernard Welt, Well, Mr. Welt. A rare treat. My birthday has its uses. That is a fun game. Which I think I’m insufficiently caffeine-up to play at the moment. I think there must a lot of candidates for Lynchian scribes. Is it possible to read this poem based on a photo of your ass. Seems like there’d so much to learn by proxy. Well, I certainly hope Chrystel comes through. She tends to. It’s been ages since I had a friend staying there. It used to be the clubhouse. Make it so. So I should see ‘May December’? I don’t know, man, my eyelids feel heavy just thinking about it, but, wait, duh, that’s a positive to you, isn’t it? I saw you were reading with Diane. Is it to be streamed, ideally? Read your ass poem. What joy and unbounded passion I possess, which, actually, I do possess, don’t I, is yours to be metastasized. Your text was pretty clean, no worries. Love, me. ** David Porter, Thank you kindly, David! I think your birthday beat mine, which is fine with me, honestly. ‘Paternoster’ is an excellent title, need I even point out. It’s cold here too. But, I don’t know, somehow the word Liverpool has coldness built into it, unlike Paris which sounds warmish? Must be the ‘pool’. Of course. Love to you back. ** Corey Heiferman, Working its way into your mind is a lot, though, really, so that’ll do. I could watch/hear that video thousand times. Thank you. It deserves something, a prize of some sort, I guess. I am making a Vassi post, probably a ‘spotlight’ one, I think. Happy day! ** Даrву🐦⬛, Ooh, that looks nice. Really steely. My b’day was fine. No stress, no, don’t think so, no. I would remember if I was stressed, I think. Your sister is a cake decorater! That’s big news! That’s a great art form, I think. Wow. That’ll come in handy. Thank you for designing one for me. Fingers crossed about the passport if you need them. Seems like it’s kind of an easy get though. First out of state place … my guess, not really remembering, is probably Hawaii since my family liked to go on summer vacations there. And you? I will adore him. Guaranteed. ** rafe (, Howdy, Rafe! Oh, I really like that clip. Wait, you made that! It worked like a charm on me. Thank you. I briefly went into a mesmerised state. Cool. Haha, mauve dessert would be better. No cake, no, just cold sesame noodles but that’s my favorite food, so … And I really should have poked a candle in it but I didn’t. Great to see you! Keep me up on yours when you feel like it. ** Matthew Doyle, Hey, Matt! Whoa, you’re here. So trippy. Thank you for the b’day pleasuring. Paris rules still. I will say it’s a little too on the freezing cold side at the moment, but even so. Really nice pix. And I have no idea where you took them, I mean other than hereabouts, which is cool. And great about the progress in the studio. You sound jazzed. (Funny, that old term). Same here, gig indefinitely postponed twice now. But he was here for a while recording his new album. My pal and ‘Room Temperature’ composer Puce Mary was in the studio with him a teeny bit. No, I haven’t heard the track, but I will now. Good to see you. ** Okay. Today the galerie presents a show by a Belgian artist who was brutally murdered when he was very young and who left behind a lot of drawings and paintings that are pretty interesting and have given him a real cult follow in memoriam. I thought you all might be interesting to discover him if you haven’t. See you tomorrow.
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