SPECTACLE, ART, OR A CUP OF TEA

As I was preparing to sit down to write this evening I was intending to talk about David Blane’s performance this evening. I was going to write about his references to what he does as being a “kind of performance-art piece,” though he doesn’t exactly call himself an artist. I was going to ponder how his displays relate to much of the performance art I have seen – in fact, to much of art in general. It reminded me somehow of Vito Acconci’s performance “Seedbed” from 1972; a piece in which Acconci slithered around under a false floor masterbating while speaking his fantasies about those walking above him into a microphone leading to a speaker in the gallery. I was going to query whether spectacle is art, or whether art must be spectacle. I was going to explore what the conditions of art might be, and express my dismay over the growing capacity of both the art and media worlds to simply accept spectacle as valuable.

I was going to do all this – until I realized I have already done so before. Many, many times, and I am growing tired of doing so. I keep trying to stop being disappointed by what we produce as human beings, but then I see another one of our byproducts and am inevitably disappointed.

So, for I while I thought I was going to write about being disappointed, or maybe disillusioned. For a moment I even considered elaborating the effects of feeling disenfranchised. Maybe I would have dropped a Gregor Samsa reference or two. But then I realized, yet again, that I have already done this too – sans the Gregor Samsa, I shall have to keep that one in mind.

So, here I sit, not quite sure what to write about. The wife is home; I have a nice cup of peppermint tea; we had a nice dinner with a glass of wine each. I can’t really, at the moment, determine why exactly I should be feeling so surly about the world. I could easily enumerate a vast list of causes, but I can’t quite pinpoint why they matter. I know that I am caught amidst an array of dilemmas producing increasing career angst – as any of you who can read between the lines surely have recognized. But right now, tonight, I just can’t bring my self to care. So David Blane is a putz; so was Vito Acconci, as were so many artists before him and as assuredly a never-ending string of artists will be in the future. I will deal with that tomorrow. Tonight I shall content myself with sipping my tea, perhaps playing a game of backgammon with the wife, and curling up in bed with her and a nice bedtime story – though I shall probably pay for this momentary resolution tomorrow with a bout of anxiety, phobia, or alienation, but fuck it I have fifteen minutes left until tomorrow.