naked lunch

I've been working on this performance art piece where I text pictures to a core group of friends and family (individually) to see what kind of text threads I can engender. It's a lot more fun and effective than just texting "What's up?" The pictures are primarily mundane images of views around my apartment, and so I call both the photo series and the performance piece naked lunch, stylized lowercase.

It all started when the management company for my apartment building cancelled a scheduled inspection, which was supposed to include checking the status of our appliances. After they cancelled, I took a picture of my lunch with my stove in the background. No reason. The composition just caught my eye. I texted it to a friend from high school just for grins. (It was only later that I thought maybe subconsciously I felt the need to show my appliances to somebody, anybody.)

My friend texted back, "What is this?" which could mean two things: what is the dish? and/or why are you sending me a picture of your lunch?

"I call it chicken casserole," I texted back, which also has a double meaning: the dish is chicken casserole, and the photo is "Chicken Casserole."

Click on images to enlarge them.

I then decided to text the image to my closest friends and family members. Most of them texted variations on "Whatcha cookin'?" Here's a good thread: 

She: Nice! What are you making?

Me: Chicken casserole!

She: Yum. I made a chicken dish this week, too. With broth, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, over gluten free pasta. Very tasty. Having leftovers for lunch today. What’s in your casserole?

Me: Chicken, cream of broccoli soup, some onions and quite a lot of pepper! [I left out egg noodles]

She: Cool. Cheese!

Me: No cheese.

She: When you make a casserole do you make it for one meal or do you have leftovers?

Me: Excellent questions! It makes 4 meals. [I reheat the other portions for lunch on subsequent days]

She: Excellent planning!

Me: I’m an experienced bachelor.

She: Haha 

[new text] I need a cook.

Me: I need a woman.

Another thread:

He: Whatcha making

Me: Chicken casserole!

He: Nice, I made pecan chicken the other day. Learned that you can add frozen veggies to the rice cooker halfway through - game changer!

Me: Gnice! 

[new text] Did that sound like Borat?

He: I haven’t seen that movie in 10 years+ and I can still hear it crystal clear in my head lol

Me: He owned it!

And: 

Another she: "Lotta cooking happening there? Cool photo!" 

I have always said that the best response you can get to an artwork is "Cool!" At least one person probably looked at the Parthenon and thought, "Cool." After a few more exchanges, this friend wrote, "It’s so cool. I’d love to see this in a collection. What would you call it and what other subjects/scenes would you choose?" Eventually I started calling it naked lunch.

A few days later, on Christmas Eve, I caught a glimpse of my shower in the dark down the hallway of my apartment and texted this picture out:

She: Hey!! Where am I?

Me: My apartment!

She: [sent a picture of her sister holding a dog standing in front of a Christmas tree] Oh cool!! Here’s -------- with new puppy --------!

Me: That is the best picture I have seen in a really long time!

This person eventually picked up on what I was doing and started sending me pictures from her own life.

One friend usually responded by providing captions for my pics:

She: The Hallway as Interpreted by the Academic and Musician. 

Another she: Not a creature was stirring

Me: Nice!

The day after Christmas I sent an image of the Christmas cards I had received:

She: It looks like an exhibit!

Me: The internet is the largest art gallery in the world!

She: But the word museum back there! What’s that?

Me: [misunderstanding what she meant] It’s similar to the way we click on a floppy disk icon to save a file.

She: [loved “It’s similar to the way we click on a floppy disk icon to save a file.”]

Me: [smiley face emoji]

Later in the thread, it dawned on me that she was referring to the words on the poster behind the Christmas cards.

Me: I was going back over this thread and I realized you were asking about the word “Museum” on the poster behind the Christmas cards. I thought you were commenting on my reference to the internet as the world’s largest art gallery.

She: Yes!!! The word museum!!!

Me: The poster is from a Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. 

I like the way it says “The Museum of Mode” behind the cards.

She: [loved “I like the way it says ‘The Museum of Mode’ behind the cards.”]

Another she: [loved an image]

Beautiful! And I meant to tell you, my mother enjoyed reading your postcard folder as well

Me: omg, --------, that’s one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received! [heart emoji]

She: [loved “omg, --------, that’s one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received! [heart emoji]”]

Me: Give your folks my love. Happy Boxing Day!

She: To you as well! 

That same day after Christmas I had a friend over for tea and conversation. Before she arrived, I prepared a cutting board of cheese and crackers:

She (not the friend who was coming over): That cheese looks good. What kind?

Me: Smoked gouda!

She: I was going to guess that! Yum.

Me: It’s my go-to. 

With stoned wheat thins.

Another she: Oh yum!!! 

[she sent a picture of her sister pushing a cat in a fuchsia cat stroller] our joint Christmas present from mom!

Me: Now THERE’S a picture!

I should mention that most of these threads continued on about different things, many of them still active when the next picture came up. Also, throughout these texts I was sprinkling in self-portraits, to give people an idea of what I was looking like these days (and to show off my updated wardrobe!). The last one I sent I call "Dress Blues":

She: [loved an image]

Me: I’m going out tomorrow night and I was putting together my wardrobe.

She: Very handsome!!!!

Me: [toothy grin smiley face emoji]

He: What’s up?

Me: I’m going out tomorrow night and I was putting together my wardrobe.

He: On a date?

Me: No, to check out a band.

He: Alright. Looking good for that. Enjoy!

Me: [toothy grin smiley face emoji]

Another she: Looking sharp, there! Off to somewhere fun or new clothes?

Me: Both! I’m going out tomorrow night and I was putting together my wardrobe.

She: We both give a thumbs up!

Another she: Going out?

Me: Mañana!

She: Looking Dapper!

Me: [toothy grin smiley face emoji]

Yet another she: hey!! i know that guy!

Me: I’m going clubbing tomorrow night and I want to look cool.

She: i think you nailed it!

Me: [toothy grin smiley face emoji]

One last she: Oh very nice look!!!! [five gold stars emoji]

Me: I’m going out tonight and I was putting together my wardrobe.

She: Ya look like a handsome devil!

Me: [heart emoji] I’ve been working on it!

She: [loved “I’ve been working on it!”]

At this point, I thought this piece might be over. But then in January we got a couple of snowstorms, and I sent out pictures from that, including this one:

She: Clever shot! Rothko-like

Me: Yes!

Another she: [loved an image]

Snow in the shade

Me: Precisely!

Another she: Like it!

Me: [smiley face emoji]

Another she: [loved an image]

Love!!

Me: [smiley face emoji]

He: What made the tracks?

Me: Human!

One of my neighbors.

He: [thumbs up emoji]

Me: [peace sign emoji]

She: That picture is cool. 

Me: I have always said that the best response you can get to an artwork is "Cool!"

She: [loved "I have always said that the best response you can get to an artwork is 'Cool!'"]

Then I had the flu and was basically snowed in for a couple of weeks. When I finally started feeling better and the weather turned a little warmer, I left the door to my apartment open. I don't have a screen door, but there are no flies in the wintertime!

Me: Airing This Place Out

I don't usually give titles or captions to the pictures in this series, but I feared this one would be too random, even in a series of random photographs, and I wasn't sure how many people had picked up on the fact that this was a project, much less a work of performance art. 

She: Looks great! Love the light in the rug and the perfectly framed tree outside

Me: You're the first to comment on the tree! I put it there!

She: Oh, you mean you cut and pasted it?

That kind of gives it everything. You have your interior and your exterior. There's a tension between them because both of them look beckoning.

Me: No, I placed it there in the composition.

Thank you!

She: Oh well, I felt it was very intentional

Me: Yes, indeed.

She: And I like it even more knowing that that was already there. Which is what I presumed. Until you said you put it there, ha ha

Me: I was being overly clever.

She: Would you have called it art if you had cut and pasted it?

Me: Absolutely.

She: I don't think you were being overly clever. I think you were being observant and that's wise we care nothing for being clever. We have a good sense of humor but as artists we're looking for truth with a capital T.

Me: All man-made objects are works of art.

And, of course, scientists are looking for Truth, too.

She: I know you believe that and I tend to agree with you.

Everything we do is contrived as artists.

Me: It's complicated. [smiley face emoji]

She: But I find something particularly moving when it's already present in the world, and we simply reframe it without touching it. 

We just show people something with fresh eyes that has been there all along.

And when I say we, I am very lightly talking about my artistry. I am not taking myself as a serious art critic.

Me: Wordsworth said that.

She: [like "It's complicated."]

Me: Or Coleridge.

She: I gotta go back and read those guys, ha ha!

I know they were so into nature

Me: Me too!

She: And the sublime

I think it's our natural state, to feel connected to nature

Maybe that sounded dumb, because I said natural and then nature

Me: The idea of the "artist" showing the masses what is right in front of their eyes.

She: Yes!

Me: Although, I don't think they'd have used the word "masses."

She: Hordes

Hoi palloi

Me: I'm sure you still have your Norton Anthology of English Literature.

She: I have both volume one and volume two

Me: Lay people.

She: Probably, they thought of them as the great unwashed

I'm just joking around

Me: I lost my volume one somewhere along the way.

She: What a shame!

I'm sure you could pick it up at any secondhand online bookstore.

Me: Yeah, I was gonna say "rubes," but that doesn't sound like them, either.

omg, I live on eBay!

She: Rubes is a good one.

Me: And Thriftbooks.

She: I think it's funny how many people think hoi polloi means hoity-toity or fancy folk!

Me: I was just thinking that!

She: I guess HOI makes them think of hoity

Come to think of it I wonder where hoity toity comes from

Me: I mean, I was thinking, "Isn't hoi polloi fancy folk"!

Shows how much I know!

She: That's OK! I love learning new words

I learn new words almost every day on spelling bee on the New York Times because the words I can't get are usually words I have no idea existed

Like TENON

That was new to me the other day

Me: I'll bet you've heard "mortise and tenon," and "tenon" just looked odd all by itself.

And I texted her a picture of mortise and tenon work on a piece of furniture my dad made.

Me: From the dresser my dad made for me.

She: Oooo I love that!!!!! He was an artist!!!

Me: Stop it!

She: You don't think he was? or are you kidding? because that is master craftsmanship.

Me: It's complicated!

She: It goes beyond technical skill. You have to have the heart for this work.

I thought you said everything man-made was art

So when you said stop it, what did you really mean?

At this point I called her on the phone to talk about this in depth. Because it's complicated!

Another she: Yes! You're supposed to for the Lunar New Year for good fortune, wealth and health

Nice photo btw!

Me: I knew that! (not)

Thank you!

Another she: That's probably a good idea after your illness! [toothy grin smiley face emoji]

Me: Exactly!

Another she: Beautiful sunny day! I'm stuck in bed with a cold.

Me: Oh, shoot. I had the flu over the holidays. It was brutal.

He: Looking good!

Me: Feels good!

This project is all about working within the format to create an entirely new art form. I feel like the recipients of the photos should be able to sell them as NFTs, now that the (art) world knows they're part of an art piece. 

The next image in the series is actually a short video of me ironing a shirt that I posted on YouTube. If I'm honest, I must admit that I didn't realize it was part of the series until after I had finished it. But that's how art happens. You listen to the work and follow where it leads you. That's the beauty of it. I think it didn't occur to me that it was part of naked lunch at first because it wasn't sent via text. But it's definitely a mundane view into my apartment!

I sent the link to the group via email. I got a couple of comments and some long, thoughtful and often very opinionated email responses from other hard-core ironers, but there were few text threads because it didn't start out as a text. After a couple of days I tried to get text threads going by texting to some members of the group, "You've got to have something to say about my video!" 

This also has two meanings. The primary meaning is, "I know you thought my video was odd, but you must have some thoughts about it." The subtext is, "I'm working on this performance art piece, and you need to say something about my video to continue to contribute to the narrative."

folklore

This post originated as an email to my niece.

Hello, dear. I assume you have not commented on my blog post about The Tortured Poets Department because the ideas there are nothing you didn't know already, which is totally understandable. You're like, "Yeah, Uncle Ned, she's been doing that for years."

It is true that I am not as much of a Swift aficionado as most Swifties. I'm well-versed in the hits, the popular deep cuts, the notable live performances, but until recently the only album I had was 1989. I actually bought TTPD when it came out, but I only really listened to it over Christmas. And now I'm listening to folklore for the first time. Of course, it's brilliant. Won Album of the Year. She actually writes in the liner notes that she's writing in others' voices. "I found myself not only writing my own stories, but also writing about or from the perspective of people I've never met, people I've known, or those I wish I hadn't."

When I first heard "the last great american dynasty," I thought she was saying, "I had a marvelous time moving in everything," instead of "I had a marvelous time ruining everything."

One of the fun things about finally listening to this album is hearing the songs I've already heard in the context of the album and without commercial interruptions.

Hi to all! Hope y'all are doing well.

Much love,

Uncle Ned

Museum postcards

A few years ago, I hit upon this idea of telling a story through a series of postcards. It all started with a series I sent to my nieces in December of 2021, telling the story (from my perspective) of a road trip my family had taken in the summer of 1976. Since then, I have sent over 400 postcards to friends and family, usually in dedicated series. Most of these series have either been about this photographer and postcard peddler from the postwar period whom I discovered named Ernest Ferguson or about Vincent van Gogh and my theory of The Starry Night. 

While I originally shopped for postcards at local indoor flea markets, I eventually moved to eBay. But there are a few Van Gogh postcards that I am always hoping to find on the auction site that unfortunately rarely if ever show up for sale. Finally, I got the bright idea to order the cards from the museums themselves. 

But museums don’t sell postcards online. I assume it’s just not worth it to them. So I decided to try a fun little experiment and send twenty dollars cash to various museums and see who would respond. (I should mention that when it comes to postcards of paintings, I’m a bit of a snob, or a purist, in that I only want the official postcards printed by the museums that own the works.) Obviously, sending cash in the mail is a bit of a crap shoot, but that’s part of the fun of it. And after all, it’s only twenty bucks.

First, on August 17, 2024, I sent requests to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art for two of my favorite paintings by Van Gogh, Rain and Landscape at Saint-Rémy (Enclosed Field with Peasant), respectively, the latter of which is integral to my Starry Night theory. Indy came in quickly, in less than two weeks. I didn’t hear from Philly.

I didn’t know how much museum postcards were going for these days. I figured twenty bucks would get me maybe five, allowing for shipping and handling. I got 15 postcards from Indianapolis! I had wanted the cards originally for any future Starry Night series I might send to people, but when I got fifteen, I decided to turn this into a sort of performance art piece and send them to my core group of friends and family who had been receiving postcard series over the past few years, nine in all. Here is the first card, front and back, with a transcript of the text I wrote, telling my friends about the project.

Click on images to enlarge them.

“Museums don’t sell postcards online. So I mailed a $20 bill to the Indianapolis Museum of Art and asked them to please send me as many postcards of this ptg. as 20 bucks would buy, minus postage. I figured with inflation they’d be, like, 3 dollars each and I’d get maybe 5. ¶ I got 15!”

On August 26, I sent a twenty dollar bill to the Cincinnati Art Museum for postcards of one of my all-time favorite Van Goghs, Undergrowth with Two Figures. They responded within two weeks as well. Here is the postcard and my text.

“I also sent the Cincinnati Art Museum 20 bucks for postcards of this painting, and they sent me 9! ¶ This is one of my all-time favorite ptgs. by Van Gogh. I’ve only ever seen it on regular (continental) sized postcards (with lots of white space top and bottom). But given its odd dimensions (50 x 100 cm; Vincent actually used this size a bunch in the last months of his life, in Auvers; before that his preferred size was 73 x 92) anyway, I’ve always felt that this wide format would lend itself perfectly to an oversized card, and obviously so did they! (It is slightly cropped top and bottom, hence ‘detail’.)”

I got the feeling that the people in the museum shops in the heartland cities of Indianapolis and Cincinnati were open to my project, while the hard-boiled east coast Philadelphians were, like, “Thanks for lunch, hayseed!” So, I sent Philadelphia another request, on September 11, saying that if they had already sent my previous request (which I was pretty sure they hadn’t) to just send me an assortment of other major works in their collection. A week later, I actually got the first batch I had requested, a month after the initial request. Given the postmark, they had obviously mailed these before they got my second request. They had just taken their time with the first request. Here's the postcard and my text.

“Obviously, I was taking a chance sending cash in the mail. Indy and Cincy responded promptly, within 2 weeks. But after 4 weeks I figured Philly had pocketed the cash, making an example of a naïve Southerner. ¶ A few days after I’d sent them another request with another $20 bill—offering them a 2d chance to do the right thing—the original request came in! 15 of these cards! ¶ Maybe they had been temporarily out.”

A couple of weeks later I got the assortment of highlights from Philly and mailed these individually to the group, based on their personalities. 

This was August and September. In October, I initiated a Phase Two of the project. I started by sending a twenty to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), requesting the postcard of their prize Rothko, which was the first in my Regarding series of “art” photographs. (I actually mailed this request on September 30.) Then, on October 8, I sent a third request to Philly for a selection from the highlights they had previously sent. Since I now knew how much the postcards and the shipping costs were (they had sent receipts with the previous batches), I mailed them a check this time, figuring they couldn’t pocket this. Nothing! And according to my bank statements, they haven’t cashed the check.

Also on the eighth, I sent a twenty to the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), asking for the postcard of another painting in the Regarding series, Jackson Pollock’s One. A week later, I sent another twenty to MoMA for The Starry Night. On that same day I sent a twenty to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for Van Gogh’s Irises. 

The Met sent the cash back with a note saying that they could not fulfil an order in this manner. I briefly thought about writing them back and telling them that their wholesome counterparts in the Midwest had fulfilled my request, even the cretins in Philadelphia had, and that in the time that it took them to send me the note they could have fulfilled the order. But I thought better of it.

Otherwise, I didn’t hear from any of the others! If these had been the first museums I had written to, in Phase One, this project probably would have never happened. 

Over a month after I sent the first MoMA requests, I did the same thing I had done with Philly, sending another twenty asking for The Starry Night again and saying that if they had already fulfilled my previous requests to just send me an assortment of their greatest hits. This was on November 23, and then, on December 14, I received the first two orders! Which means that this time, unlike Philly, they probably got my third request before they finally mailed the first two. I imagine a different associate or a manager at the MoMA Store opening this third request and asking the staff what previous requests I was referring to—and the culprit secretly going back and filling those requests.

The first two orders, you will recall, were for The Starry Night and Pollock’s One, and they fulfilled them together. Unfortunately, MoMA’s postcard prices are higher than the other museums (some of which gave me a volume discount) and so I only received nine of each of these postcards, and there are nine people on my mailing list for this project, which meant that there would be no cards left over for me, especially The Starry Night. So, some people got The Starry Night and some people got the Pollock, which kind of worked out because some people had already gotten a Starry Night postcard from me in the past.

They even gave me change!

"MoMA finally came in! But only after I mailed them a third request—two months after the first two! ¶ I think I sent them on a guilt trip!" At the bottom of the Pollock cards I wrote, "This is the painting in the Regarding series." At the bottom of the Starry Night cards, I wrote, "The brightest 'star' is actually Venus.©" This phrase is actually not copyrighted, but it is one of my taglines and it should be.

Oddly, I have never received the third MoMA request. And I’m still waiting for the third Philly request.

Miraculously, on Christmas Eve, I finally received the Rothko cards from SFMOMA, three months after the original request!

"I sent 20 bucks to SFMOMA on Sept. 30, and they came in on Christmas Eve! ¶ This is the first painting in the Regarding series."

"Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?"

Taylor Swift is famous for writing personal, confessional songs, often about old love interests. Because of this, listeners may be inclined to assume that any song of Swift’s that is about a relationship is about one of her own relationships. A close listen to her most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department, reveals that many of the songs on this album are written from the perspectives of other people, particularly women in abusive relationships, often from lower class and/or fundamentalist Christian backgrounds. Swift uses her stature to give voice to this underrepresented group. (In her Eras Tour Book, she calls the album "Female Rage: The Musical.")

Some of the songs on TTPD are almost assuredly about old boyfriends. “So Long, London” sounds like it’s about Joe Alwyn. “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is definitely about Matty Healy. “The Manuscript” revisits the subject of Swift’s magnum opus, “All Too Well.” “The Alchemy” might be about Swift’s current love interest, Travis Kelce, with its sports references.

I think it’s assumed that “But Daddy I Love Him” is also about Kelce. However, there are no specific details that point to Kelce in this song. It’s a picaresque pop-country song written in the voice of a young woman who is vilified by her small townsfolk for getting involved with a man they deem to be a bad influence on her. The protagonist of the song decries “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best / Clutching their pearls, sighing ‘What a mess’.” She continues railing against fundamentalist hypocrites, singing, “I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empath’s clothing / God save the most judgmental creeps / Who say they want what’s best for me / Sanctimoniously performing soliloquys I’ll never see.” And she says multiple times, “You ain’t gotta pray for me.” (The nonstandard English further attests to the speaker's social class.)

Swift calls out fundamentalism in other songs on the album. “Guilty As Sin?” is about the fundamentalist prohibition against thinking salacious thoughts and self-pleasuring. The speaker sings, “What if he’s written ‘mine’ on my upper thigh / Only in my mind?” and “Without ever touching his skin / How can I be guilty as sin?” She says that as “My bedsheets are ablaze / I’ve screamed his name / Building up like waves.”

The speaker also calls out fundamentalism when she sings, “Someone told me / There’s no such thing as bad thoughts / Only your actions talk.” She sings, “They’re gonna crucify me anyway.” She laments that religious types require of her “long suffering propriety” and avers that her infatuation is a type of natural religion: “What if the way you hold me / Is actually what’s holy?” and “I choose you and me . . . religiously” (her ellipsis). And she asks twice, at the beginning of the song and at the end, “Am I allowed to cry?”

In “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” the protagonist sings, “They shake their heads, saying ‘God help her’ / When I tell ’em he’s my man / But your good Lord doesn’t need to lift a finger / I can fix him. No, really, I can.” Another major theme of the album is depicted in this song: abusive relationships. “Trust me,” she says, “I can handle me a dangerous man.”

When I first bought the album and heard the song “Fresh Out the Slammer,” I was a little dismissive, asking what Taylor Swift knows about partners in prison. It was only after I realized that many of the songs are written from the perspectives of different types of people that I listened more closely and really began to admire this song. The narrative dialogue is written from the perspective of both the man and the woman. The man opens the song with the refrain, singing plaintively in a high-pitched voice, “Now pretty baby I’m running back home to you / Fresh out the slammer I know who my first call will be to.”

The verses have a much more strident cadence, illustrating the woman’s apprehension and giving clues to their relationship prior to the man’s incarceration: “Another summer, taking cover / Rolling thunder he don’t understand me.” She speaks of being “Handcuffed to the spell I was under / For just one hour of sunshine . . . / In the shade of how he was feeling,” and “My friends tried but I wouldn’t hear it / Watched me daily disappearing / For just one glimpse of his smile.”

In “Down Bad,” she sings, “I’ll build you a fort on some planet / Where they can all understand it / How dare you think it’s romantic / Leaving me safe and stranded.” In “So Long, London,” she sings, “How much sad did you / Think I had in me?” and “Just how low did you think I’d go? / Before I'd self-implode / Before I’d have to go to be free.” She continues, “And my friends said it isn’t right to be scared / Every day of a love affair / Every breath feels like rarest air / When you’re not sure if he wants to be there.” And, “You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days / And I’m just getting color back into my face.”

In “loml” (love of my life/loss of my life), she sings, “Who’s gonna tell me the truth / When you blew in with the winds of fate / And told me I reformed you / When your impressionist paintings of heaven / Turned out to be fakes / Well, you took me to hell, too.” Of “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” she says, “In public [you] showed me off / Then sank in stoned oblivion.” “I would have died for your sins / Instead I just died inside.” And “You said normal girls were 'boring' / But you were gone by the morning.”

Abusive relationships are at the heart of “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” This mesmerizing number is about a formerly institutionalized woman (who may or may not be dead) who is tormented by the people of her neighborhood. The arrangement is ominous, with spooky chords and “ooh ooh” background vocals that suggest Halloween ghosts. “If you wanted me dead,” the protagonist sings to her tormentors, “You should have just said [so] / Nothing makes me feel more alive.” And then the arrangement turns sprightly, as the speaker appears like a goblin: “So I leap from the gallows / And I levitate down your street / Crash the party like a record scratch / As I scream: ‘Who’s afraid of little old me?!'” 

“You should be,” she intones. This is the story of the toothless woman on the block who is treated as an outcast, as if she were a witch. “So all you kids can sneak into my / House, with all the cobwebs / I’m always drunk on my own tears / Isn’t that what they all said? / That I’ll sue you if you step on my lawn / That I’m fearsome and I’m wretched / And I’m wrong.” 

She says, “They say they didn’t do it to hurt me / But what if they did? / I want to snarl and show you / Just how disturbed this has made me / You wouldn’t last an hour / In the asylum where they raised me.”

She says that it was the institutionalization itself that made her mentally unstable. “'Cause you lured me, and you / Hurt me, and you taught me / You caged me / And then you called me crazy / I am what I am 'cause you trained me.”

The title voices the feelings of many of the protagonists in these songs: Why are you so threatened by someone you clearly feel you have some sort of control over? These songs are deadly serious. Some of the stories are couched in pop arrangements (“Guilty As Sin?”, “But Daddy I Love Him,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”), but most of them are straight-up ballads (with consistently sparkling arrangements). In her most mature album to date, Swift offers her fellow maturing listeners empathetic stories reflecting their own lives, helping them to see their situations clearly and hopefully to find a way out.

I would note that the relationship in "But Daddy I Love Him" has a happy ending. "But oh my God you should see your faces."

=//=

The first thing I thought of when I saw the photo of Swift on the cover of the Tortured Poets Department songbook (it's also on the cover of one of the "deluxe" editions of the album) was the sculpture by Michelangelo traditionally called the Dying Slave, now in the Louvre. I feel certain that Swift was intentionally making a reference to this sculpture. She didn't go to college, but she is very well-versed in Western culture and there is no way she hasn't visited the Louvre. I also picture her hosting dinner parties or salons with distinguished scholars from Columbia, NYU, etc. 

In addition to being a sculptor, painter and architect, Michelangelo was also a poet, indeed a tortured poet. My photo below does two things. It connects Swift to the larger Western creative tradition and it unites my two passions: music and "art" history. I have come to realize that the audience for my blog posts on Taylor Swift is not really millennials and gen z-ers but people of my own generation who may want to know why they should be taking Swift seriously as an artist.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Werner Trittleiter

One of my recent art projects has been uploading some of my original photographs to various Wikipedia pages. It started with the Folly Boat, whose Wikipedia page I was surprised to find did not have an accompanying photo. Then I uploaded one of my sketches to the Staunton Wikipedia page. This was a little risky, since sketches are typically seen as personal expression and Wikipedia only wants you to upload pictures that impart factual information. But my drawing is an objective depiction of the traffic lights at the intersection of Churchville and Central Avenues in Staunton, and I placed the image in the Infrastructure section, next to the paragraph identifying the major highways that pass through Staunton. Churchville Avenue is coterminous with U.S. 250. This drawing was uploaded on July 24, and it is still there.

Next I posted one of my photographs of Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty to that sculpture's page. This one was also tricky, since Spiral Jetty is somehow owned by the Dia Art Foundation, and they supposedly own the copyright to images of the work. But the Wikipedia entry itself said it was okay, and the image has remained up since I posted it on July 29.

I have since added five more photographs to the Staunton page, as well as photos to pages for Jackson Pollock, the Brandywine River Museum of Art, Bubblegum Alley, Cadillac Ranch, and more. It got to the point where I created two pages—Folly Mills Creek and the old Staunton Coca-Cola bottling plant—just to be able to place my photos on them! 

I have some pictures taken at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, and with these I decided to get a little mischievous. The pictures were taken before I was informed that interior photography was prohibited at the gallery, so even though a Wikipedia page is not an official website, I figured there might be people associated with the gallery watching the page who might delete photos of the interior. The first picture I added was a really nice pic I got of Peggy observing some large-scale photographs by Andreas Gursky. For the caption, I wrote, "Installation view, Gagosian Gallery, Madison Ave., featuring the work of Andreas Gursksy," including a wikilink to Gursky's page. Nothing snarky here. 

Click on image to enlarge it.

But then I added a picture of an empty gallery, a space where artworks are usually displayed that just happened to be empty at the time. In the world of "contemporary art," this room could be perceived as a work of art in itself, which is a little snarky as it mildly sends up Conceptualism. And I placed it in the section on Legal Issues, subsection Tax Evasion, as in, "If you don't get your affairs with the IRS in order, this is what your galleries could look like." A little snarky.

 

I let these two pictures stand for a week to see if anybody would delete them. Nobody did. So then I got real snarky and uploaded a photo I had taken of a utility space in the gallery that was visible to the public with a stepladder leaning against a wall.

For the caption I used the same format I had used for the first picture: "Installation view, Gagosian Gallery, Madison Ave., featuring the work of Werner Trittleiter." Sounds like a real artist's name, right? Werner is the worldwide leader in the manufacture and sale of stepladders, and "trittleiter" is the German word for "stepladder."

Of course, this is an homage to the pioneering example of conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. Duchamp inaugurated the idea of the "readymade," the idea that any man-made object can be perceived as a work of "art" if it is placed in an "art gallery." This is an early commentary on the absurdity of the idea that "art" is an order or class separate from all other man-made objects, and that the "art world" is the sole arbiter of what qualifies as "art." 

So, I wanted to see if art world types would automatically assume that the stepladder is a work of "contemporary art" and/or to see if they would be too embarrassed to admit that they were unfamiliar with the work of Werner Trittleiter. The picture was posted on October 23, and it's still there. So maybe I got 'em. Or maybe it's just Wikipedia and nobody cares.

Nedrock 4

One of the toughest things about playing music for a living, especially playing covers in bars and at tiki huts, was the lack of applause. Even when I was killing it, I would get little to no response. I attributed this to a number of factors. First, in such settings, the guy or gal with the guitar (as I refer to this type of performer) is generally considered background music. And I made things a little harder on myself by refusing to play the old canon. It was customary, even into the '90s and probably still today, to play classics from the '60s and '70s—"Brown Eyed Girl," "Margaritaville," "American Pie," and so on. As I have written about before, coming out of the great rock renaissance of the early '90s I was determined to play what I called the new canon—songs by Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Nirvana, R.E.M., U2, etc. I felt like the herd mentality prevented people from responding to these songs because they were unsure if everybody else was liking them and they didn't want to be the only ones clapping.

Of course, the possibility must be entertained that maybe I just wasn't that good. While I was at the height of my powers in terms of vocal strength and range, it is true that my guitar-playing skills were rudimentary at best, having only just learned to play a few years before. (This is another reason why I didn't have a large repertoire of the classics. If I had played guitar as a kid, I probably would have had the entire Beatles catalogue at my fingertips.) 

I also have to admit that I didn't have the best stage presence. A fellow performer years before had told me that this job is as much stand-up as it is singer. I never really got good at bantering with the audience. One of my recurring lines was, "I take requests, I just don't play them"!

And it didn't help that I fancied myself a rock star. In largely family environments, I sprinkled my set list with drug songs—"Sister Morphine," "Running to Stand Still," "Not an Addict," to name a few—and smoked a joint between sets, sometimes right on stage. To say nothing of my long hair and dangling earrings.

The gold standard in Charleston in those days were the Futch Brothers, particularly my old friend from summer camp, Hank Futch. Hank and Hal would pack TBonz to the rafters every Tuesday night—Tuesday night!—and the crowd would applaud uproariously after every song. Of course, they mostly played the old canon, but they also had their secret weapon, a mien it never occurred to me to try to emulate: Hank's beaming smile.

The most genuine and memorable round of applause I ever received came many years later, in a very different setting. Exactly ten years ago, in November of 2014, out of money and out of favor, I had to move into the homeless shelter here in Staunton. This is actually when I started going by Edward up here. I was still on social media at the time (as Ned Hartley) and, not knowing what type of people I would be rubbing elbows with in the shelter, I didn't want people I knew nothing about trying to find out about me on Facebook. All my life, particularly in college, whenever "Edward Hartley" was called, I would always say, "Here. It's Ned." But now, when the staff at the shelter called me Edward, I left it at that.

Well, it turns out the people in the shelter were just fine, most of them simply in a similar situation as mine, caught a little short. Still, after one weekend I knew I had to get out of there, and the Monday after checking in on the previous Thursday I walked down to the Food Lion exactly one mile from the shelter and asked for a job. Knowing that I would probably run into people from the shelter there and not wanting them to see "Ned" on my name tag and wonder what the fuck, I introduced myself to the manager as Edward, and the rest is history.

Ironically, just a couple of weeks after I checked in, I received an email from SNHU offering me a job interview. I mean, if I had gotten the email a couple of weeks earlier I still probably would have had to move into the shelter, since it turned out I wouldn't actually start working for them until the following spring, but who knows? Anyway, when I was hired, obviously I was hired as Edward Hartley, my university email identified me as Edward, and so I continued with this new handle. Again, I didn't want my students and superiors searching for me on social media.

Now, I have been a proud Ned my whole life, but I'd always wondered what it would be like to go by my Christian name. There was this dude in Charleston when I was in college named Edward with long hair who had a dog and rode around town on a bicycle, and I always wanted to be that guy. One thing I haven't done, however, is demand that all my old friends start calling me Edward. I don't want to be that guy.

I mostly kept to myself in the shelter. I had learned from Cool Hand Luke how to keep my mouth shut and stay out of other people's business. At meals I mostly sat by myself, solving crossword puzzles. In the weeks before Christmas, they brought in members of choirs and praise groups from local churches to sing Christmas carols during supper. They were mostly okay. As with the volunteers who brought in dinner on Friday nights, they figured as homeless people we would be grateful for anything.

One such group consisted of three older ladies and a guy with a guitar. They weren't bad, exactly, just uninspired. The guy had said at the beginning that if anyone wanted to come up and join them they should feel free to do so. After a few lifeless numbers, I went up to offer my services. When I asked the guy for his guitar he was hesitant at first but did hand it to me. As I started playing, the women were still standing and wondering if they were expected to sing with me. I told them they could take a break, and the three of them immediately fell back into their chairs like rapidly deflated balloons, grateful looks on their faces.

I opened with "For the Summer" by Ray LaMontagne. I had randomly learned this song in the months before I moved up here, but I had always been struck by its aptness when I played it after I moved up here. "Rollin' through these hills I've known I'd be comin' / Ain't a man alive who likes to be alone / It's been years since I've seen my lady smiling / Have I been, have I been away so long?" 

I have always prided myself on being able to fill a space with my voice. When I played in subway stations, people would hear me first as they were buying their tickets and then would be surprised when they walked to the platform and saw that I wasn't using an amplifier. The dining hall in the shelter was the size of a small elementary school cafeteria, with probably 60 or 70 people in it, men women and children, and many of them turned to look as I played. When I was finished they gave me a hearty and sincere round of applause.

Next I played Springsteen's "My Hometown," which they loved. I'm telling you, of all the gigs I've played over the years, this performance was by far the most gratifying. We were all in the same boat, in a sea of apathy, and I think we all appreciated a moment of authenticity, from their perspective and from mine.

Afterward, one of my fellow residents—a young woman with curly blonde locks and a spectacular ass (everybody could see it)—came up to me and said, "Well, Edward, you have many hidden talents."

I'll briefly mention two other memorable performances. My regular barber was on Beverley Street between the shelter and the Food Lion, and when I went in for a haircut and told him where I was living and told him about the Christmas performance, he said he had a policy (which of course he had just made up) where he would give a free haircut in exchange for a song. He was kind of an interesting dude, sort of a local impresario, and his barber shop was filled with musical instruments. I picked up a guitar (which he said had once been played by Dave Matthews; who knows?) and played "My Hometown." The people waiting gave me a nice round of applause.

(This was the guy who organized the parking-lot concert in front of his shop that I played in May of 2015, after moving out of the shelter.)

When I played in the subways, I usually played for only a couple of hours during evening rush hour, but on Fridays I would often play longer. One Friday night, in my favorite station at 23d and Broadway, right underneath the Flatiron Building, I played for, like, five hours. I seem to remember seeing some people skipping trains to listen. For my last song, around 10 p.m., I played Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," which resonated throughout the cavernous underground, the trains coming less frequently now. When I finished, one man who had been listening said quietly, "That was awesome."

Nedrock, 23d Street Station, NR Line, Manhattan, summer 1997

I'm still alive (or, Nedrock 3)

A few years ago, as my various diseases began to pile up, my aunt—my dad's sister—asked if I would text her every morning to let her know that I was still alive. I said no. A few months later she asked again. I reminded her that I had already said no, and she said, "You could change your mind." Shortly thereafter I did change my mind. I figured, what could it cost me? Plus, I've come to learn in this world that when someone offers you their love, you consider yourself lucky and accept it.

I recently turned 60. I can't believe it; I still feel like a kid. Maybe it's because I never had children or owned a house. But my body is definitely aging. I have to constantly remind myself that people don't see a child when they see me. I have to be particularly careful around the sketch group, where all the ladies look like mother figures to me before I remind myself that we're all basically the same age.

Still, whenever I start to feel old, I remind myself that Brad Pitt and I are the same age. That Johnny Depp and I are the same age. That Eddie Vedder and I are the same age.

I've seen Pearl Jam twice. The first time, I only caught one song. We were going to Lollapalooza in the summer of '92, which featured Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ministry, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Pearl Jam. One asshole who went with us made us wait in the car for nearly an hour while he got ready. Then when we got to Charlotte we had to check into our hotel rooms. We figured there was no way a band as big as Pearl Jam would be the opening act. Well, they were. We got there as they were playing their final encore: Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World." 

Some ten years later I got atonement of a sort when a friend in Charlotte called to see if I wanted to see Pearl Jam. It was actually at the same outdoor venue and it was awesome. We got high and sang along to every song. I learned later that Pearl Jam didn't play "Jeremy" at every show. They played "Alive," "Black," "Even Flow," "Better Man" at pretty much every show, but "Jeremy" was special. They hadn't played it in Raleigh, but they played it for us. Eddie implored us to sing with him, and when we got to the "aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye" part I got goose bumps, as twenty thousand souls all hit it right on cue. It was a communal, cathartic experience, and I still get goose bumps just thinking about it. They also closed this show with "Rockin' in the Free World," which I'd seen Young, another of my heroes, premiere live on SNL years before. 

This was around the time that I got my first computer, and when I got home I purchased my first download: the soundboard recording of the show, the show I'd just seen a couple of nights before, from Pearl Jam's website. I still have it on both my iPods. 

As I've written before, "Alive" was the song that convinced me we were listening to the wrong radio station at the sports bar. It was all happening—Nirvana, Pearl Jam, grunge, alternative rock—but we were listening to the "classic rock" station. This morning a live video recording of Pearl Jam performing recently in a Seattle arena came up on my YouTube feed, and there were Eddie and Stone and Mike and Jeff and Matt still rocking. It was "Alive," and I cried a little as I watched and listened. Cried for time gone by, cried for memories of those magical days in the Nineties, cried for these old compatriots still bringing down the house.

And I texted my aunt the same three words I send to her every morning: "I'm still alive."

Nedrock, Pitt Street, Charleston, 1994