Photocopied Art Show

A Street Seer's Vision, or Photocopies of It at Least
New York Times
January 31, 2006
By Holland Cotter

As I see it, David Hammons, born in 1943, is one of the three or four most interesting and influential American artists of the last 30 years. By this I mean, among other things, that he has deeply influenced the most interesting younger artists to have emerged during that time.

I bump into Mr. Hammons all over New York City. Not the artist himself, whom I've never met, and chances are never will, but the cosmopolitan poetry of his work, an art made of found street stuff (chicken bones, shells, chains, hair, liquor bottles, snow), music, silence, history, ideas, light and bodies (his, yours, mine).

I see a Hammons poetry in sidewalk sales and trash bins piled high like altars, and in the way people, homeless or otherwise, casually, ritually, put their everyday lives together. I hear it in qawwali tapes in smokeshops, in subway drummers, in Sun Ra on a boombox, in Nina Simone's ticked-off voice. It's there in the way the city keeps falling apart and miraculously cohering; in the way wind from a grate makes a crazy balloon of a plastic bag, sends it soaring and brings it down.

The poetry is also detectable in "David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective" at the Triple Candie gallery in Harlem, though Mr. Hammons and his art are conspicuously absent. For several years, this nonprofit space in Harlem has been after the artist to do an exhibition, of new work or old. But he has kept his distance, and collectors have refused to make loans. The gallery's directors, Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, decided to do a show anyway, a career survey, no less.

How do you do a show if you don't have art? Use copies. How do you get copies? Find photographs of the original art. So that's what Ms. Bancroft and Mr. Nesbett did. They photocopied illustrations of existing, or once existing, Hammons pieces from books and magazines, and downloaded other images from the Internet. They then taped the 8½-by-11-inch prints to the gallery walls.

There are nearly 100 of them in chronological order, from Mr. Hammons's intensely political art of the early 1970's through his more disembodied conceptual work of the last few years. Not everything is accounted for; a terrific piece Mr. Hammons created in 1993 for the feisty Tribes Gallery in the East Village, for example, is missing. But a lot is here.

In an important sense, as a gallery news release states, the show isn't about Mr. Hammons at all. It's a conceptual gesture, a critical statement about how art is marketed and shown. Twice in the past, the gallery presented solos by artists who chose to remain anonymous, identified only by their work. Anonymity is inimical to an art industry that supports itself entirely on a currency of brand-names, and enlists a legion of functionaries — critics, curators and dealers — to cook names up.

"David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective" is a flipped version of the anonymous solo. In this case, the artist's name is boldly advertised, but there is no product, or no authentic product. Without product, the art-world apparatus of institutional display, of exclusive ownership, of critical opining, is unmoored, left to flap in the wind.

But the show is something else, too. It is a homage to Mr. Hammons, one peculiarly suited to an artist who has maintained a strategically elusive relationship with the art world. As a documentary timeline of his career, it confirms what many people believe: no contemporary artist has integrated so many cultural sources — Euro-American, Asian, African, African-American — with such passion, probity and wit. And none have made a visual art that so closely approximates the fleetness of jazz, the tautness of dance and the punning, mind-prying resonance of the poetic word.

What's surprising is how much of all this comes through in the photocopies that line the walls and make up the catalog. I showed the catalog to someone close to me who is highly attuned to art but has a healthy skepticism about contemporary work and no direct knowledge of Mr. Hammons's. He was knocked out. Even in crummy photocopies, he could see what Mr. Hammons, very basically, is: a planetary griot in a locked-down nation, a great eye, a seer of the African-American street, connoisseur of mutability. The real deal.

Surely no artist could have a more mutable retrospective than this one, which will probably end up in the trash at the end of its run. Triple Candie says it has no idea what Mr. Hammons thinks of their efforts. He may feel furious, ripped-off, ready to sue for theft of aesthetic and intellectual property. He may be touched by the admiration the show conveys.

It has even crossed my mind that "David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective" could be a David Hammons piece. Like his art, it is as much a brain experience as an eye experience. It baffles your thinking, sharpens your senses; in short, makes you more alive. Walking down West 126th Street, after my visit, I saw a neatly swept-together mound of refuse on the sidewalk: dirt, paper, a pint bottle, dead flowers, a perfect little altar, or still life, with no sweeper in sight.

DADA

Attacker of Duchamp's urinal sentenced
Jan. 24, 2006
PIERRE-ANTOINE SOUCHARD
Associated Press

PARIS - A court has convicted a 77-year-old French man for attacking artist Marcel Duchamp's famed porcelain urinal with a hammer, rejecting the defendant's contention that he had increased the value of the art work by making it an "original."

The court gave Pierre Pinoncelli a three-month suspended prison sentence Tuesday and ordered him to pay a $245,490 fine.

Pinoncelli also was ordered to pay $17,616 to repair "Fountain," a work worth millions of dollars that was chipped in the Jan. 4 hammer attack at the Pompidou Center. The work was part of an exhibit of the early 20th century's avant-garde Dada movement.

The Pompidou Center had sought more than $523,930 for the damage.

Pinoncelli - who announced that he plans to appeal the decision - told reporters that what he had done was not vandalism but a "wink" at Dadaism that had Duchamp's blessing. "I told him in 1967 that I would do something," Pinoncelli said.

"I added to its value," he said, assuring that Duchamp would "have had a good laugh."

Duchamp, who died in 1968, emphasized the creative process, and a role for the spectator.

The work has an estimated value of $3.4 million, said Marie Delion, a lawyer for the Pompidou Center. The original was lost but in 1964 Duchamp created eight other versions of the work.

After buying his ticket to the exhibit on Jan. 4, Pinoncelli attacked "Fountain" with a hammer before writing "Dada" on the sculpture.

Pinoncelli, a former salesman who calls himself a participant in the creative process as conceived by Duchamp, said that his hammer attack was an artistic endeavor. During questioning, he had told police his attack was a work of performance art and said then it might have pleased the artists of Dada.

The January urinal attack was not the first for Pinoncelli. He urinated on the piece during a 1993 exhibition in Nimes in southern France.

"The day that you understand that what belongs to someone else does not belong to you, things will go better between yourself and society," the court said after handing down the sentence.

Pinoncelli's actions are not limited to the Dada movement or works of art. He cut off his own finger as an expression of solidarity with Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage by leftist guerrillas since 2002.

Duchamp's idea to transform a urinal into a work of art first appeared in 1917 when he tried to display the piece at a New York show using a pseudonym, R. Mutt. It was refused.

A 2004 poll of 500 arts figures ranked "Fountain" as the most influential work of modern art_ ahead of Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," Andy Warhol's screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and "Guernica," Picasso's depiction of war's devastation.

Institute for Small Town Studies

There's a great organization based in Fairfield, Iowa, called the Institute for Small Town Studies.

"We provide community design assistance and small town planning services, pursue historic preservation, and develop educational programs based on small town themes."

Browse the site and look at the news articles that have links. If the ideas interest you, email the director and request that your name be added to the mailing list for their publication, fishwrap. I have the latest 4 copies, and I can vouch for their high quality.

This is an organization I would be happy to support. Their focus on small town community reminds me of the E.F. Schumacher Society. E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful is on my personal top five list of most influential books.

Check it out after you look the ISTS website.

Artist Tyeb Mehta

(click on photo for images of artwork)

Indian Artist Enjoys His World Audience
New York Times
January 24, 2006
By Somini Sengupta

MUMBAI - The man who makes the most coveted art in India lives in a small fourth-floor walk-up apartment in a crowded, unremarkable suburb. A sign in the hallway warns of an irregular water supply; the bustle of striving metropolitan India seeps in through his shuttered windows, making it even harder for the artist, 80 and hard of hearing, to entertain a visitor. The only luxury item in his living room is a snowy white iPod, resting on a set of speakers, unless you include a 1959 portrait of his wife, drawn in Chinese ink, that hangs above their dining table, and his 2003 painting "Falling Bird."

Tyeb Mehta's paintings fetch the highest prices of any living Indian artist: last fall, "Mahisasura," a 1997 rendering of the buffalo-demon of Hindu mythology, brought $1.58 million at Christie's in New York, the first time a contemporary Indian painting had crossed the million-dollar mark. (The turning point came five years ago, when a room-size triptych by Mr. Mehta, "Celebration," sold for more than $300,000, signaling a surge of market interest in Indian art.)

Mr. Mehta's career has mirrored the changing fortunes of contemporary Indian art over the last six decades, from the intellectual fervor of its birth at Indian independence in 1947, to a lifetime of aesthetic and financial struggle, to the improbable rise of the Indian art market in the last few years. As the Indian economy has galloped forward, art galleries have mushroomed, prices have skyrocketed and contemporary art has become the latest marker of affluence among the newly minted rich.

Mr. Mehta seems to have taken it all in with a sense of amused detachment. He calls the surge in art prices "meaningless." Still, the recognition pleases him.

"Good it happens in our lifetime," he said. "I'm 80 years old. I could be bumped off anytime by the Almighty. If somebody has some money, they can buy. Let them buy."

Yet Mr. Mehta has, in fact, reaped little financial reward from the art boom. His work has ballooned in price, but the pieces have changed hands several times since he made them, so the sales are in the secondary market. He could churn out drawings and paintings now to profit from the bull market, but he hasn't. Mr. Mehta has never been terribly prolific, and he produces very little today. Art critics rank him among India's least commercial artists. Vincent van Gogh, he is fond of pointing out, died hungry.

Tyeb Mehta was born in 1925 in rural Gujarat, in western India, and was reared in the Crawford Market neighborhood of Mumbai, also known as Bombay, in an orthodox Shiite community known as the Dawoodi Bohras. His family was in the movie business, and he too worked in that world for a few years. But he soon left the family trade, joined the Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art here and met the seminal circle of Indian modernists, the Progressive Artists Group.

Not long after that, he left the family fold altogether. Mr. Mehta recalls it this way: One night, after what was probably an insignificant argument with a member of the extended family, he and his wife, Sakina, walked out of the house. He now calls it the turning point in his life. He was 29.

"There was no exposure to the outside world," he said, describing the insularity of that milieu. "You break the rules, you're out. That's the demand of a community. I chose to leave."

Mr. Mehta is a frail, cheerful man, with graying hair that nearly reaches his shoulders. One must strain to hear him - his voice is nearly gone. He speaks with a studied, quiet seriousness.

The central passion of his work stems from his country's central wound: the 1947 partition of British India that left a million people dead, drove millions from their homes and inscribed a deep sense of anguish across his imagination. In the Hindu-Muslim clashes that broke out around 1947, Mr. Mehta watched as his neighbors butchered a stranger to death. The victim was Hindu and the attackers were Muslim, but it happened the other way around in other neighborhoods. Many Indians his age have an identical memory.

"That violence gave me the clue about the emotion I want to paint," he explained. "That violence has stuck into my mind."

The bull became a favorite figure. Not a bull in repose, but a tied-up, writhing, mutilated bull. "I was looking for an image which would not narrate, but suggest something which was deep within me, the violence that I witnessed during partition," Mr. Mehta said. "Have you seen a bull running? This tremendous energy being butchered for nothing."

Figures are constants in his work: the falling human figure, the buffalo-demon of Hindu lore, the rickshaw-puller and then, in the late 1980's, the goddess. In his hands, the Hindu goddess Kali is potbellied and squat. Her arms are flailing and her mouth is a terrifyingly gorgeous gash of red. The art critic Yashodhara Dalmia credits Mr. Mehta with making the mythic modern. She calls him an "arch modernist."

"In terms of art history, he is very important," said Ms. Dalmia, who is organizing a retrospective of Mr. Mehta's work later this year at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. "He has reused the modernist method in a wholly inventive and original manner, where the conflict in his environment, the political and social events in his environment, are expressed with a great subtlety of means. It's always personal and public at the same time."

Another critic, Ranjit Hoskote, argues that Mr. Mehta's Shiite upbringing, and the central themes of violence and martyrdom in Shia thought, are the foundations of his work.

Mr. Mehta's own list of his influences includes the ancient sculptures of Elephanta off the coast of Mumbai, European Renaissance painters, Francis Bacon, Paul Klee and Barnett Newman. Certainly, painters of his generation studied them all.

But they also knew they were making their own path. There was no Indian modern tradition to turn to. "One had to create from nowhere," Mr. Mehta remembered. "We learned painting together by talking, by looking at each other's work, by criticizing, by appreciating."

And also by struggling. Once, there was not enough money to buy canvases to put together a show. Another time, he told his wife they would starve. "She said, 'O.K., we will starve together,' " Mr. Mehta recalled.

It is rare to hear Mr. Mehta speak of his life without referring to his wife. It was she who worked outside the house and paid the bills. It was he who read and painted at home. It was only after 12 years of painting that he made his first sale: to a buyer brought by his friend and fellow painter M. F. Hussein. Mr. Mehta sold her four canvases for what is now roughly $30.

"It felt great," Mr. Mehta said. "Life was cheap in those days. You could live simply. Now simplicity is gone from our lives."

Kurt Vonnegut

There was a splendid little interview with Kurt Vonnegut this morning on NPR's Morning Edition. Incredibly enough, to both Steve Inskeep and me, Mr. Vonnegut actually defended intelligent design a bit. That was after he talked up Chinese communism for a moment. What a guy.

The Long View: Kurt Vonnegut Judges Modern Society

Vonnegut.com

PostSecret

"PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

New secrets are posted here every Sunday."

postsecret.blogspot.com

Cheese

The deli clerk at my local grocery store knows me now. I'm the cheese guy. A few months ago I asked about some discounted specialty cheese, wondering what they would do with it the next day when it passed its expiration date. She told me they would throw it out per food safety regulations. I thought, "Why should I pay 1/2 price now, when tomorrow they will throw it away?" I asked her if I could get it the next day, and she said she had to sell it for $0.99--store rules.

So the next morning I went in at 8am and bought seven packages of Brie, for $0.99 each instead of for $4.99 each! I immediately put them in the freezer, and we enjoyed Brie for the next two months.

Now I regular check the deli display and keep a list of upcoming expiration dates. Last week I bought three packages of Hummus with Chipotle Pepper for $0.99, instead of $3.

Today I hit the jackpot! I cleaned out their (recently outdated) selection of imported French Brie as well as six packages of fresh mozzarella. I paid $12.63 for what would regularly have cost $63.65! That made my week.

So the next time you're browsing your local grocery store and drooling over the expensive Rochefort, take note of the expiration dates. The day before they expire, mention to the deli manager that you would like to purchase the outdated cheese the next day. Ask for the best price, and you should get a deal. My only requirement is that you report back on your score!

Cheese is an aged product, and thus does not go "bad." Blue cheese is intentionally moldy. Kept in the freezer, most cheese will stay fresh for a long time. If some does happen to get moldy, just trim off the mold and wash the remainder--it's good as new! Don't buy cheese for $10/lb when you can patiently wait to get it for $2.

Want to come over for fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil salad?

Tao Te Ching

Eleven

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

Million Dollar Homepage

A crazy Brit came up with a great idea to make money and pay for "Uni." His "Million Dollar Homepage" is made up of one million pixels that are sold as advertising space. Prices start at $100 for a 10x10 space. He guarantees the site will remain online for at least five years. His site traffic is already more than one million visitors per week!

The last 1000 pixels are now being auctioned on Ebay; current price: $140,300.

I think this idea could be adapted into a unique art project. It could be done to raise money in a similar way, or it could just be a method for creating random design.

Fictional Nonfiction

I tend to be a fan of oddball humor disguised as truth. I adore Andy Kauffman's brilliant comedic endeavors where he wrestled and defeated women, sang horrible music and irritated audience members. I love art that pokes a finger in the eye of the institution. I don't mind being hoodwinked once in a while.

But James Frey went too far. The New York Times and the Smoking Gun have articles exposing the fabrications and falsehoods in his "memoir" A Million Little Pieces. It looks like he used his life experiences as a rough outline and then filled in graphic and violent details to make a better story. I wouldn't mind quite so much, except that he has now given millions of people the idea that 12-step programs aren't that great, and that his super willpower approach is better. How many sorry addicts will refuse AA or NA because they want to try the James Frey method? His fiction isn't worth much as fiction, which is why he finally decided to peddle it as nonfiction, I guess. I'll be very interested to see what happens now. I hope Oprah dumps him.

A different story is in the works exposing a different author, who happens to not exist. It seems the author, JT Leroy, is a concoction represented by one woman in person and another woman in public. I don't know as much about this story, since I haven't read any of his (their) books. Here's the article from the NY Times:

The Unmasking of JT Leroy: In Public, He's a She
New York Times
January 9, 2006
By Warren St. John

It has been one of the most bizarre literary mysteries in recent memory: Who, exactly, is the novelist JT Leroy? An answer, at long last, is taking shape.

Mr. Leroy's tale was harrowing in its details and uplifting in its arc. He was a young truck-stop prostitute who had escaped rural West Virginia for the dismal life of a homeless San Francisco drug addict. Rescued as a young teenager by a couple named Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop and treated by a psychologist, he was able to turn his terrible youth into a thriving career as a writer. JT Leroy has published three critically acclaimed works of fiction noted for their stark portrayal of child prostitution and drug use.

Along the way Mr. Leroy gained the friendship and trust of celebrities and noted writers, who supported his career financially and offered him emotional support when he declared that he was infected with H.I.V. Sales were good, and his books were published around the world. Shy and reclusive, Mr. Leroy, now 25, appeared in public often disguised beneath a wig and sunglasses.

But the young man in the wig and sunglasses, it turns out, is not a man at all. The public role of JT Leroy is played by Savannah Knoop, Geoffrey Knoop's half sister, who is in her mid-20's.

A photograph of Ms. Knoop at a 2003 opening for a clothing store in San Francisco was discovered online. Five intimates of Mr. Leroy's, including his literary agent, his business manager and the producer of a forthcoming movie based on one of his books, were shown the photograph and identified Ms. Knoop as the person they have known as JT Leroy.

"That's JT Leroy," said Ira Silverberg, Mr. Leroy's literary agent, upon seeing the photograph. Mr. Silverberg said he had met Mr. Leroy a number of times in person. Lilly Bright, a producer of "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things," a 2004 film based on Mr. Leroy's 2001 collection of stories, was no less certain. "It's JT Leroy," she said, adding that she had worked with Mr. Leroy extensively on the production.

Nyoka Lowery, a Bay Area hat designer who appears in the photograph alongside the person in question, also said she knew that person well.

"That's Savannah," Ms. Lowery said. She said she had known Ms. Knoop for years. Ms. Lowery identified Ms. Knoop in another photograph online, on the events page of a site for a San Francisco clothing company called Nisa (www.nisasf.com). Umay Mohammed, an owner of Nisa, said in a telephone interview that Savannah Knoop was a friend, and a model on her company's Web site.

Reached by telephone, Ms. Knoop said, "I don't need this in my life right now," before hanging up. She did not respond to several voice mail messages seeking further comment.

But the discovery of the public face of JT Leroy is only part of the mystery. Still unsettled is the question of who writes under that name.

Writers like Dennis Cooper, Mary Gaitskill and Mary Karr were among those who offered support to Mr. Leroy's literary career, as did several prominent editors at Manhattan publishing houses, and numerous film and pop music celebrities offered him emotional support, including Courtney Love, Tatum O'Neal, Billy Corgan, Shirley Manson and Carrie Fisher.

And of course there were journalists (including, in November 2004, this reporter), who wrote credulous profiles of the successful young writer after interviewing him, often in person. The New York Times even published an article last September under the byline JT Leroy in a Sunday magazine supplement, T: Travel. (A subsequent T: Travel article by Mr. Leroy, about the HBO series "Deadwood," was reassigned by editors when questions about his identity began to surface.)

The unmasking of Ms. Knoop adds to a mounting circumstantial case that Laura Albert is the person who writes as JT Leroy. Pressure to admit the ruse has been building on Ms. Albert since October, when New York magazine published an article that advanced a theory that she was the author of JT Leroy's books.

The New York article, written by Stephen Beachy, portrayed Ms. Albert, 40, and Mr. Knoop, 39, as unfulfilled rock musicians who concocted the character of JT Leroy to gain access first to literary circles and, later, to celebrities. The scheme began, Mr. Beachy wrote, with faxes, e-mail messages and phone calls by Ms. Albert, speaking in a West Virginia accent as JT Leroy. The article also described an acquaintance of Ms. Albert's who said she had asked him to type and fax manuscripts that bore striking thematic similarities to work later published by JT Leroy. When that name became famous, Mr. Beachy theorized, an actor was needed to play JT Leroy in person; he did not know, he wrote, who that actor was.

Mr. Beachy discovered that the advance for Mr. Leroy's first novel, "Sarah," published in 2000, was paid to Laura Albert's sister, JoAnna Albert, and that further payments to JT Leroy were made to a Nevada corporation, Underdogs Inc.

The president of that company, according to public records, is Carolyn F. Albert, Ms. Albert's mother, who lives in Brooklyn Heights. Reached by telephone, she declined to comment. The payment for Mr. Leroy's article in The Times was also made to Underdogs.

After the publication of Mr. Beachy's article, The Times began to examine the circumstances of the T: Travel article written by Mr. Leroy, about a trip to Disneyland Paris. A review of the paperwork accompanying the assignment revealed a discrepancy: the article described four people on the journey. Expense receipts submitted to T: Travel by Mr. Leroy, however, included only an Air France itinerary for three people.

Employees at Disneyland Paris and at two Paris hotels identified Ms. Albert from photographs as the person who presented herself as JT Leroy. Those employees said no one remotely resembling photographs of JT Leroy was traveling with Ms. Albert, who told them her companions were her husband and son. Ms. Albert and Mr. Knoop are the parents of a young son.

When hotel employees told Ms. Albert they were under the impression that JT Leroy was a man, they said, she told them that she had had a sex-change operation three years before and was now a woman.

Ms. Albert did not respond to numerous voice mail messages requesting comment. Reached by telephone, Mr. Knoop declined to comment.

Peter Cane, a Manhattan lawyer, responded to phone and e-mail messages left at the number and e-mail address JT Leroy provided his editors at The Times.

When The Times asked Mr. Cane to provide his client's passport to confirm his identity and that he had traveled to Europe, Mr. Cane declined. Later, however, he gave this reporter an e-mail statement from JT Leroy in response to questions about Savannah Knoop: "As a transgendered human, subject to attacks," the statement read, "I use stand-ins to protect my identity." In the past, JT Leroy has invoked transgenderism to explain confusion over his identity.

It is unclear what effect the unmasking of Ms. Knoop will have on JT Leroy's readers, who are now faced with the question of whether they have been responding to the books published under that name, or to the story behind them. The identification of Ms. Knoop may also have repercussions for the publishing world; JT Leroy is under contract with Viking for a new novel, and Mr. Silverberg, his agent, said his books were on sale in as many as 20 different countries. Carolyn Coleburn, the director of publicity at Viking, said simply, "We stand by our authors."

But perhaps those most affected by the revelation that Ms. Knoop has been playing the public role of JT Leroy are those who went out of their way to help someone they thought was a troubled young man.

"To present yourself as a person who is dying of AIDS in a culture which has lost so many writers and voices of great meaning, to take advantage of that sympathy and empathy, is the most unfortunate part of all of this," Mr. Silverberg said. "A lot of people believed they were supporting not only a good and innovative and adventurous voice, but that we were supporting a person."

An Essay on Writing

Music and Talking
by James Frey

I spent ten years teaching myself to write. I spent ten years trying to find my voice. I spent ten years alone in front of a computer scratching my head, kicking my desk, yelling at the wall. Throughout that time, one of my goals was to remove any and all signs of obvious influence from my work. I did not want to be a clone. I did not want to be the next version of someone else. I did not want to be a copy artist. I wanted to be the first me. I wanted to write in a voice that was new and different, consistent with the voice that I felt in my heart, consistent with the voice that I heard in my head.

Two things led me to that voice. Two things influenced me more than any individual writer or book or series of books. The two things were not obvious to me at first, and were things that I took for granted. The two things are music and talking.

As I write, I work with a simple formula: where was I, who was I with, what happened, how did it make me feel. The first three parts of this formula — where was I, who was I with, what happened — are the facts. They are usually simple and inform the reader as to the basics of any given situation. The fourth part — how did it make me feel — is what is most important to me. I believe that feelings, physical or emotional, define any individual's state of existence. Feelings are what makes us human, and they are what makes the experience of life unique and worthwhile. In my work I try to express my feelings as simply and honestly and effectively as I can, with the goal being that the reader will come to an understanding of my state of existence at any given time. If I am in pain, I want the reader to be in pain. If I feel joy, I want the reader to feel joy. If I feel sick, I want to make the reader sick.

In order to do this, I needed to feel what I was writing about as I was writing about it. If I cried in the book, I was usually crying as I sat at my computer. If I was angry in the book, I was angry as I wrote, and I pounded the keys of my keyboard and swore to myself and sometimes screamed. If I was violent in the book, I was violent at my desk, that violence usually expressing itself in the breaking of glass or smashing of plastic cups. Because the events in my book took place many years ago, I almost always needed to manipulate myself into the proper state of mind. To do that I listen to music. All sorts of music. Happy music, sad music, cheesy music, angry music. I listen to beautiful music and repulsive music, music that I don't understand, music that confuses me. I listen to hardcore punk, gangster rap, heavy metal, love songs, the latest teenage pop hits, classical symphonies, classic rock, opera, jazz, disco, new wave from the eighties, funk from the seventies. I have a two thousand song library of music on my computer and it is always on while I write. I flip from song to song as I work, always searching for the closest match to whatever it is I am trying to express. When I can't find specific songs to help me, I listen to Bob Dylan. When Dylan doesn't help, I usually take a break.

After music, the second most important influence on my work is talking. I don't talk to other people, I talk to myself. As I compose sentences, I talk them through before I set them down. Sometimes I only need to say something once. Sometimes twice. Sometimes five or six or ten or twenty times, I speak my sentences over and over and over, I speak them aloud until they are correct. I do this for three reasons. The first reason is because I believe that my speaking voice is my most authentic voice, and it is the closest and most accurate expression of my thoughts. Though I allow myself to refine it through repetition, the spoken word forces me to listen to what would come out of me naturally, and it helps me capture it.

The second reason I talk is rhythm. There is a rhythm to speech that is different from the rhythms of most writing. It is an easier rhythm, a more natural rhythm. It is a rhythm that is closer to the rhythm I feel inside me. Talking, and transcribing my speech allows me to capture that rhythm more easily than if I didn't talk. It forces the natural rhythm of my speech on the page and removes what I consider a false written rhythm.

The third reason for talking to myself is so I can write realistic dialogue. In my view, most books don't have realistic dialogue. They have clunky, writerly dialogue that is slowed down and encumbered with proper spellings and correct grammar. If read out loud, the dialogue sounds stupid and formal. I don't use quotes and I could care less about grammar. I have conversations with myself where I put myself into the frame of the individual characters, and I literally speak for them. This allows me, I believe, to write dialogue that is accurate and realistic. It is what a person would actually say, instead of what a writer might have them say through writing. There is a difference.

If anyone were to ever watch me write, they would probably think I was either an idiot or lunatic or both. I dance, I yell, I throw shit and kick shit and break shit. Sometimes I cry and sometimes I shake and sometimes I'm sick. I talk through all of it, say the same sentences over and over and over. While writing this essay, every single word was spoken before it was written, most of them several times. I listened to Bruce Springsteen, Anthrax, Run DMC, Taj Mahal, Queen, Journey and Debbie Gibson.

Brokeback Mountain

I saw Ang Lee's new film the second day it opened in our area. It was one of the most memorable films I've seen in a while. The theater was packed for the matinee performance, even in our conservative midwestern city. The audience was a mature and middle-aged group, with probably a quarter gay and lesbian, also middle-aged. There were a few white haired gay couples well past retirement. In the midwest, few venues exist for the middle-aged and older gay and lesbian community to gather. This film briefly served this function.

While I didn't find this film as overtly powerful as Apocalypse Now or Schindler's List, the images and emotions are still with me. I would like to watch it again to let it soak in a little deeper.

As a citizen of the midwest, and a resident of ranching country, I found no faults in the characters and narrative of the film. Ennis and Jack are genuine cowboys, with the gait and drawl of the cowboys at the livestock auction on the east side of my small town.

The passion, as well, felt entirely real and convincing. My interactions with my gay friends and visits with them to midwestern gay bars and events gave me no reasons to doubt that these two men loved each other deeply. Their struggles to work out their identities resonated with my observations in the real world.

I strongly recommend seeing this film in a theater to experience the power of the landscapes of the west.

Reason #666 to Boycott Microsoft

Microsoft Shuts Blog's Site After Complaints by Beijing
New York Times
January 6, 2006
By David Barboza and Tom Zeller Jr.

BEIJING, Jan. 5 - Microsoft has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China after he discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out here one week ago.

The decision is the latest in a series of measures in which some of America's biggest technology companies have cooperated with the Chinese authorities to censor Web sites and curb dissent or free speech online as they seek access to China's booming Internet marketplace.

Microsoft drew criticism last summer when it was discovered that its blog tool in China was designed to filter words like "democracy" and "human rights" from blog titles. The company said Thursday that it must "comply with global and local laws."

"This is a complex and difficult issue," said Brooke Richardson, a group product manager for MSN in Seattle. "We think it's better to be there with our services than not be there."

The site pulled down was a popular one created by Zhao Jing, a well-known blogger with an online pen name, An Ti. Mr. Zhao, 30, also works as a research assistant in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times.

The blog was removed last week from a Microsoft service called MSN Spaces after the blog discussed the firing of the independent-minded editor of The Beijing News, which prompted 100 journalists at the paper to go on strike Dec. 29. It was an unusual show of solidarity for a Chinese news organization in an industry that has complied with tight restrictions on what can be published.

The move by Microsoft comes at a time when the Chinese government is stepping up its own efforts to crack down on press freedom. Several prominent editors and journalists have been jailed in China over the last few years and charged with everything from espionage to revealing state secrets.

Another research assistant for The New York Times, Zhao Yan (no relation to Zhao Jing), was indicted last month on charges that he passed state secrets to the newspaper, which published a report in 2004 about the timing of Jiang Zemin's decision to give up the country's top military post.

China closely monitors what people here post on the Internet and the government regularly shuts Web sites and deletes postings that are considered antigovernment. A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the company had blocked "many sites" in China. The MSN Spaces sites are maintained on computer servers in the United States.

Ms. Richardson of Microsoft said Mr. Zhou's site was taken down after Chinese authorities made a request through a Shanghai-based affiliate of the company.

The shutdown of Mr. Zhao's site drew attention and condemnation this week elsewhere online. Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, wrote on her blog, referring to Microsoft and other technology companies: "Can we be sure they won't do the same thing in response to potentially illegal demands by an overzealous government agency in our own country?"

Robert Scoble, a blogger and official "technology evangelist" for Microsoft, took a public stand against the company's action. "This one is depressing to me," he wrote on Tuesday. "It's one thing to pull a list of words out of blogs using an algorithm. It's another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger's work."

Another American online service operating in China, Yahoo, was widely criticized in the fall after it was revealed that the company had provided Chinese authorities with information that led to the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist who kept a personal e-mail account with Yahoo. Yahoo also defended its action by saying it was forced to comply with local law.

Mr. Zhao is so well known as a blogger that he served as China's lone jury member last year in Germany for a world blog competition.

A former computer programmer, Mr. Zhao worked as a journalist for a Chinese newspaper and as a research assistant for The Washington Post before joining The New York Times in 2003.

Mr. Zhao, in an interview this evening, said he had kept a personal blog for more than a year and was regularly censored in China, even though he has tried to be careful not to write about significant issues related to his work at The Times.

He was apparently one of the first on the Internet to mention that several editors could be fired from The Beijing News. He said he posted something about possible firings on Dec. 28.

Two days later, after the top editor there was dismissed, Reuters reported that about a hundred journalists had gone on strike over the dispute and added that several Chinese blogs and Internet chat rooms were discussing the issue. The report said Mr. Zhao had used his blog to urge readers to cancel their subscriptions.

Mr. Zhao said in an interview Thursday that Microsoft chose to delete his blog on Dec. 30 with no warning. "I didn't even say I supported the strike," he said. "This action by Microsoft infringed upon my freedom of speech. They even deleted my blog and gave me no chance to back up my files without any warning."

David Barboza reported from Beijing for this article and Tom Zeller Jr. from New York.

Vice #1

The first edition of ABC's Dancing With the Stars might have hooked me. I don't like TV. It's been years since I watched anything regularly. But I might be starting again. If there must be reality TV, what could be better than reviving a public interest in ballroom dancing? I admit, the outfits and gyrations of the female professional dancers look a bit more like MTV than Lawrence Welk, but the moves are amazing! And it is produced by the BBC, so it must be quality.

Drew Lachey, formerly of the band 98 Degrees, danced a pretty impressive Cha Cha with his partner, professional dancer Cheryl Burke. I didn't think their chemistry was all that great, but the judges sure loved them. Shows you how much I know about ballroom dancing.

I cast my online vote for former NFL wide receiver, Jerry Rice! He and his partner, Anna Trebunskaya, danced a mean Cha Cha. That guy can swing his hips! Impressive.

Check out the show next Thursday evening, if you have nothing better to do. Next week's dances will be the Rumba and the Quickstep.

A Million Little Pieces

Read all 430 pages in the last 30 hours. This book isn't light reading, but if you have had any experiences with or around drug and alcohol addiction, it will pull you in. This is the first time I've heard of a recovered meth addict, which gives some encouragement. This guy gave up a lot more than just meth, too. His story, albeit more gruesome, parallels some of my own observations of a friend's addiction.

My previously liberal or progressive views of drug policy are slowly shifting, I think. I at least recognize the need for more and better and accessible drug treatment options. I highly recommend this book, in spite of Oprah's endorsement. Lord knows I'm not the kind to jump on bandwagons!

Talk in a Box

Real Talk for Real People
Changing the World One Conversation at a Time

Talk in a Box: click to go to the official website for more information or to purchase your own copy of the game.