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Weak XLVIII

26 November 2024

No. 90 (cartoon)

I’ve devoted my life to making art.

All that effort and nothing to show for it.

I started with nothing and still have most of it.

27 November 2024

Worthless Critique

Seymor brought his idiot friend Rodney to the party tonight. I tried to avoid them, but I got ambushed at the guacamole bowl.

“Seymor showed me your work,” Rodney said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to hear my critique.”

“Sure, why not?” I lied.

“It’s worthless ...” he began.

“I know, but tell me anyway,” I insisted.

He skulked off leaving me alone with the dregs of the guacamole. Well played, if I do say so myself, and I just did since no one else will.

28 November 2024

Thanksgiving Slurry and Paste

Ruth can’t chew for the next few weeks; she can only eat food from a blender. She suggested that I could photograph her meals, an idea that had immediate appeal.

I thought of the food on the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a Soylent Corporation buffet, all that Food of the Future. The enchantment didn’t last long. Even with great titles like Parmigiano-Reggiano and Shaved Black Winter Truffles in a conceptual piece, photographs of almost identical pulp and slop were the wrong kind of tedious, even for me.

29 November 2024

Not Photographing Robots

I read a great piece by James Somers in The New Yorker, Getting a Grip. I didn’t understand it very well, in part because I was too impatient to try, and because I am slowing down as technological developments are speeding up, or something like that.

I was most interested in his description of the research facilities he visited: lots of brilliant people working with convoluted robots and computers tethered by kilometers of cables and wiring. I thought that I’d love to be there with my camera.

And then I didn’t. I soon realized that, given the fascinating subject matter, it would be almost impossible for anyone to make uninteresting photographs in such an exotic landscape. Where’s the fun in that?

I’ve returned to pondering Bucatini no. 15 pasta. There’s a lot more to see, but it’s certainly not as easy or interesting as photographing robots.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

30 November 2024

It Depends

Ah yes, I remember it well. Mark and Joanna took me to see Blue Man Group in Boston in the early nineties; what a show! It was so good that it turned into big business with the performance repeated tens of thousands of times around the world. (Most of the money in the arts is at the top of the food chain; Cirque du Soleil bought Blue Man Group seven years ago.)

I had an ambiguous response when I read the headline, Blue Man Group to end run in New York City after more than thirty years. Seventeen thousand performances is a darn good run by anyone’s meterstick, and you can still see the same production in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Orlando, Shanghai, or on the Japan or North American tours.

My immediate stupid reaction was to dismiss the franchises because anything that popular can’t be good. My illogic didn’t hold up because I saw one of the kajillion shows, and that got me to pondering repetition in the arts.

No one would suggest retiring the warhorse operas and symphonies, even though they’ve been around for centuries. Frank Zappa called orchestra musicians mechanics, and the hundreds (thousands?) of Blue Men are also fungible. The problem with repetition comes from individuals. The Ramones’ energy was drained by the last unremarkable concert, and who can listen to eighty-year-old Roger Harry Daltrey, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, sing “Hope I die before I get old” with a straight face?

In inconclusive conclusion, my answer to whether repetition in the arts is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing is the same as the response to most questions: it depends.

1 December 2024

Geranium in the Cranium

When I think of my brain, I imagine an old mainframe computer running Cobol or Fortran, functional but outdated. I just read an article suggesting that I instead imagine it like my guts, a biome where all sorts of bacteria, fungi, and microbes are hard at work and occasionally brawling. It’s more of a garden or barnyard than an International Business Machines cleanroom.

If I get dementia (if I haven’t already), the culprit may be some nasty biological bugger or vital infection instead of malfunctioning switches and transistors. The early research is inconclusive, so about the only thing I can do is to keep my cerebral goo a cozy home for the good microbes, the ones you want as friends and neighbors.

As Grace Slick advised, “Feed your head.”

2 December 2024

Seven Strands of Capellini Drying on Bucatini no. 15

Seven Strands of Capellini Drying on Bucatini no. 15 was a sight to behold, so I beheld it, I did. And then I photographed it so that generations of humans who have yet to be conceived can admire it as well.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart