the wait is real

please bear with me, a bit tired. ok here's the thing. i used to live near ikebukuro, and i used to work in ikebukuro. but one of my strongest memories of that place, isn't real.

















this is a still from julia's video twenty-nine, part of the twenty-nine stations of the yamanote line. back in those days, we talked a lot about what the end-state of the project would be, and it wasn't just an exhibition. a book, vhs tape, cd, all sold as a little box set, with poems and sound collages and what you see up there only fluid and full-color prints of paintings. multimedia for your living room. what stopped us? fear? lack of connections? disorganization? anyway maybe nothing stopped us. maybe this is a great time to either find a publisher or take advantage of all this distribute-it-yourself, there are a lot of book printing services out there, i listen to mike's cd about once a month, i guess...

anyway this image was one of my favorite things - is, not was - is one of my favorite things to ever come out of an art project i've been associated with. i don't know what makes me more excited or feel better than knowing that in some way i helped make their stuff possible. the experience, with brian, wandering around, yes, nothing could be better, how could time be better spent. but that idea that brian's poems might not exist, would not exist probably, and that particular arrangement of sounds mike made, and now finally being able to see julia's video again, after all this time, got it transferred from vhs to dvd last week, just reminded me - fantasy, my reality has always been grounded in it. life was leaches and braces. reality was "we're going to the stars" and i still have a hard time figuring out what's real, what's valuable, what's true. do i really paint with video?