Some catastrophes have their own architecture

I'm fed up with sincerity. All I want is to be a complete asshole. To be negative about everything. To hate people. To feel contempt for them. To pretend they're to blame for all my problems. I'm reminded of something I heard at a meeting: "A relapse is something you construct." Some catastrophes have their own architecture.

Dear Dickhead, by Virginie Despentes, is a catastrophe: poor characterization and muddled philosophizing make for a boring novel that brings nothing new to #MeToo feminism. Also, everyone is a complete asshole.

An established, middle-aged author (Oscar), who is also a recovering alcoholic and party guy, is accused of past sexual transgressions by his young publicist (Zoe), who as a result of his behaviour felt compelled to leave her career in publishing and is now a social media influencer. For some obscure reason he takes up a correspondence with a childhood acquaintance, his older sister's best friend (Rebecca), who grew up to be a famous, drop-dead-gorgeous film star now facing ageism (but it doesn't really help that she's a junkie and a selfish bitch). 

As an epistolary novel, it's a complete failure. Featuring email exchanges between Oscar and Rebecca, and then missives (blog posts?) from Zoe, their voices are indistinguishable — they all embody a similar kind of anger, victimhood, entitlement, righteousness, moral ambiguity. A good character doesn't have to likeable; I appreciate a provocative stance, but they should show some distinct personality if they hope to leave a mark.  

Rebecca is rightfully skeptical of Oscar's past behaviour and current motivations.

I don't believe that every victim's word is sacrosanct. Obviously, women sometimes lie. Either because they have no principles or because they think it's fair game. But the number of pathological liars among victims is infinitesimal, whereas the percentage of rapists among the male population speaks volumes about the state of male heterosexuality. Yet I suspect you're far more shocked by the possibility of an unfounded accusation than you are by the fact that some of your friends are rapists. On this basis — how can I put this delicately? — even with a supersize dose of compassion, it's hard to feel sorry for you.

While there is a resolution of sorts of the main plot point, there is not much character growth to speak of, beyond Oscar's and Rebecca's progress in beating addiction, and an inkling of an awareness that the world is bigger than themselves — they still have a very long way to go. 

Heroin is to crack what great literature is to Twitter — a whole different story. I say that because it sounds good. Deep down, real junkies take drugs because they know they're worthless. Whether you're shooting dope or smoking crack, what you're really doing is reminding yourself that you're shit. When you become a junkie, you're saying to the world, you really think you're saying to the world, you really think you're better than me? You're deluded. Shooting up and fucking up is our way of telling other people how much we despise them. Their pathetic efforts to stand on their own two feet. I'd rather die than do yoga.

I don't understand the praise for this book. There are cuss words and sex and drugs — does this pass as transgressive? It bored me. I often couldn't tell who was speaking, to ascertain whose past (or gender, or profession) was formative in shaping the arguments put forth. Their logic was convoluted. Clearly Despentes has (more) things to say about sexism and feminism and #MeToo and ageism and the effects of Covid isolation and refugees in France, but these epistolary explosions don't merit the label of "novel" — a book of incendiary essays would've had bigger impact.

My generation of women are famous for our ability to put up with shit. We were told, "No feminism, it turns men off," and we said, "Don't worry, Daddy, I won't bother anyone with my little problems." But all around me, I saw women being broken. That it all happened in a dignified silence didn't help anyone.

Excerpt.

Trying to balance it all

What are you looking for? she had asked me.

I think about it. A place for these dreams that I don't know what to do with?

This weekend I read an entire novel in my phone, not something I thought I would ever do. But I got an alert from the library that my loan was expiring soon, and I’d completely forgotten that I'd waited for it and checked it out, but clearly I hadn’t bothered to download it to my reader, and I figured that by the time I went through the tedious process of connecting and deauthorizing and reauthorizing and turning around three times while reciting backwards the final chapter of something I had not yet read, it would’ve expired, so maybe I’d just glance through it on my laptop. The laptop, being lightweight and portable as it is, is actually well suited to reading in my swing chair, but I could not find a setting to enable full screen, so there was the browser window bookmarking various things that need my attention and displaying the time, which was an obstacle to satisfactory immersion, so at some point after the first cocktail while the evenings chops were still marinating I switched to reading on my phone.

I have in fact been deeply engrossed in reading another novel over the last couple of weeks, States of Emergency, by Chris Knapp. I think I love this novel, but I am deeply frustrated by its being (as a review copy) in pdf format and therefore a strain on my eyes, as well as a strain on my brain as I’m unable to highlight passages, and am mystified by the perplexing muddle of prepositions and articles, as if they had all been removed and half of them randomly reinserted as part of some diabolical copyediting test. And it has me reliving 2015 and 2016 and reconsidering my own past and current states of emergency, though they are very different from the narrator's. 

So I took a break to read What You Are Looking for Is in the Library, by Michiko Aoyama. And it was just what I needed— entirely undemanding and kinda sweet (verging on saccharine). It’s the naive career advice I needed to hear, less goal-driven than my sister would urge, slightly more practical than my manager’s suggestion to lie flat. (“Lying flat” is a Chinese concept, he told me, akin to quiet quitting, but more intentional, less burdened by external judgment.)

In What You Are Looking for, five Tokyo denizens, each the centre of their own story, ask the librarian at the community house for recommendations and get something different from what they'd anticipated. Through her intervention they begin to realize a life (dare I say "career path") for which they are best suited, by making adjustments (to attitude if not action) or by making peace. 

The book covers various scenarios: working mom, retiree, unskilled shopgirl, unemployed artist, and entrepreneur wannabe. 

The themes are fairly universal and translate well to North American culture, where for the most part identity is tightly linked to job. Being a company man may no longer be valued, or even possible, as it once was, and perhaps this mentality lingers a little longer in Asia, intertwined as it is with traditional expectations and obligations. 

Seitaro clasps his cup in both hands. "What kind of job do you think is totally secure?" he quizzes me in return.

"A public employee like you, or a big corporation?"

"Nothing is," he replies, gently shaking his head. "Not one single job I could name is absolutely secure. Everybody just does their best to hang in there, trying to balance it all."

His expression is mild, but his tone is dead serious.

"There no guarantee of certainty in anything. But the flip side to there being no guarantee of security, is that there's also no certainty that something is a dud."

The book isn't a dud, but it's thin and insubstantial — not the type of literature that typically feeds my soul. I only read it because it warranted inclusion in the 2024 Tournament of Books. But for a few hours, it charmed me and soothed my worries.

I think my cat is dying and I'm losing my mind

I've been grieving for my cat for six weeks now. She's alive, but we don't know what her future looks like. Every 8 hours I put drops in her right eye. It looks unchanged (except for that one day I was convinced it was clearing up), a puddle of dried blood clouding her iris. I worry that she's not eating enough, I check her litter obsessively. She's clearly depressed, adjusting to limited vision, and she's wasting away. Most days I cry, away from my daughter, away from my cat, because I need to stay positive for them. I've always cried to Rosie about everything. But not this. It's exhausting.

We'd been to emergency (that day I came home and she was yowling), and we follow up with a regular vet within the week. Did the emergency clinic give us a prognosis, he asks. You understand? They'd told us she was old. It's probably chronic kidney disease. It's probably a heart condition. It's probably a tumour that burst into her eye, she's probably riddled with cancer. But nothing definite. She's old. (She's only 14.)

We agree to do bloodwork to give us an indication of Rosie's overall health. It comes back mostly normal. Strange, he says. Nothing a little dietary adjustment couldn't improve. Still, he tells us to give her all our love and prepare for the worst. (He also tells us about the best Polish restaurant in Mexico City.)

A couple of weeks later, I call about a prescription refill. I send photos so the vet can better gauge the progress of Rosie's condition. He calls while I'm sitting with my mother in the ER, who's suffering a bout of UTI delirium. Her appetite is good, regular bowel movements, sleeping a bit more. (My mother interrupts to say she's not sleeping at all. Not you, mom; the cat.) Strange, he says. Normally, he sees a cat in this condition, it's dead in three, maybe five days.

Twice there have been issues with prescription refills. As if there's a note on her file: Don't bother, expected to die. (I think there may be a similar note on my mother's file.)

Every morning when I wake my first thought is of her. If I sense her in my bed, I reach out to check that she's breathing, and I pet her till the purr comes. Those mornings she's not in my bed, I panic. Has she slunk off to die? I'm crying again.

I am more distraught, or so I tell myself, at the prospect of losing my cat than of losing my mother. It occurs to me that I'm channeling all the stress of recent months (ailing mother, job change, general dissatisfaction) into my worry for Rosie. I'm depressed like I don't think I ever have been. I'm crying again.

I've been reading You Are a Cat!, a pick-a-plot book. In one thread, feline protagonist Holden visits a bookstore, whose previous denizen, Rosie, died. I'm crying again.

We're to see a veterinary ophthalmologist Friday. For two weeks I've considered calling, wavering between begging them to move up the appointment because she might die before then, and putting off the appointment for another week or two to relieve us all of the stress because she might die before then. Certainly, I can't face hearing a medical professional tell us that it's time. 

If she dies in her sleep, I'll bury her under the lilac tree outside my bedroom window, maybe plant a rose for her. I'm crying again. I don't know if this is legal. I ponder how I'll execute this plan without attracting the neighbours' attention.

Something's got to give. My mom's ok, she turns 91 this weekend. The houseplants are still ok. The outdoor garden boxes are beyond all hope. (What god can keep everything alive?)

Update (24.07.29): The ophthalmologist confirms that vision in Rosie's right eye is gone. But the anti-hypertensive medication is working. Rosie's not dying, she's been through a lot and she's tired; she'll be fine. And I'm crying again.

Life was work and also a performance

I perform in art time and in real time, and you can't tell the difference — no one knows how to separate a real act from an art act in my work. 

— Tehching Hsieh

Memory Piece, by Lisa Ko, covers the past, present, and future, with each major section focusing on one of a trio of lifelong friends: respectively, Giselle, the performance artist; Jackie, the techy; and Ellen, the activist. They met as teenagers, bonded over a barbecue.

Giselle's life starts to come into focus for her when she hears about a performance piece that can only be Tehching Hsieh's Rope Piece (for which I will be forever grateful this book introduced me to).

She could not make her mother happy yet felt responsible for her mother's unhappiness. Her coping mechanism was to treat everything like it was a situation, but her performance self and real self had become indistinguishable. Work was a performance; life was work and also a performance. It wasn't that she needed to wait for the perfect idea or invent something new. Instead, she recognized how she could shape her life into the performance itself.

(Perhaps I should treat my life this way: perform as an employee, perform as a writer, perform as a doting daughter, etc. to the best of my ability. Fake it till I make it.)

This is the most interesting section of the book for me — its exploration of art, time, labour, intention, context, posterity.

After months of writing her memories, Giselle had begun to see everything she did as future memory. The mundane could be fabulous; everything became expansive. This made her more daring, because when you saw life through the lens of potential nostalgia, even difficult events could carry the smallest element of fondness for having survived them.

(I think we do this every time we snap a photo.)

In the spirit of archiving the everyday, Jackie pioneers some blog software, but grapples with data management and the battle between democratization and turning a profit. When the dot-com bubble bursts, some of her moral grappling is alleviated. 

But. The novel as a whole doesn't really work for me. It's giving writer workshop. A couple linguistic anachronisms jarred me out of the story (young women were not calling each other "dude" in the early 1990s; similarly "vibe" and "hook up"  appear with clear 2020s usages). It describes the old women of 2040 as if they were the old women of yesteryear. 

Most significantly, I don't understand how we get to that future from here. It's a housing crisis taken to the extreme, compounded by constant surveillance and border checks. Despite the known evils of gentrification, real-estate speculation, property-flipping and vacation rentals, construction industry and municipal corruption, and plain old greed, it doesn't feel right for Ellen's story as a squatter fighting eviction to end up as it does. (At some point I figured that Y2K had transpired as the apocalyptic event some feared it would be. Except even in the novel's reality we know it didn't.) And I'm a little disappointed that aspects of Ellen's alternative living — community building, recycling and waste management, dumpster diving, rooftop-gardening — weren't more fleshed out. 

But, admirably, this novel shows how three women manage to sidestep capitalism. A little.

Giselle said she had stopped identifying as an artist, but she still worked. Art work is work, it's labor. So is working in a café. It's all the same thing.

Something is lost here

But something is lost here. While filmed sex seemingly opens up a world of sexual possibility, all too often it shuts down the sexual imagination, making it weak, dependent, lazy, codified. The sexual imagination is transformed into a mimesis-machine, incapable of generating its own novelty. In Intercourse (1987) Andrea Dworkin warned of just this:

Imagination is not a synonym for sexual fantasy, which in only — pathetically — a programmed tape loop repeating repeating in the narcoleptic mind. Imagination finds new meanings, new forms; complex and empathetic values and acts. The person with imagination is pushed forward by it into a world of possibility and risk, a distinct world of meaning and choice; not into a nearly bare junkyard of symbols manipulated to evoke rote responses.

If sex education sought to endow young people not just with better "rote responses" but with an emboldened sexual imagination — the capacity to bring forth "new meanings, new forms" — it would have to be, I think, a kind of negative education. It wouldn't assert its authority to tell the truth about sex, but rather remind young people that the authority on what sex is, and could become, lies with them. Sex can, if they choose, remain as generations before them have choses: violent, selfish and unequal. Or sex can — if they choose — be something more joyful, more equal, freer. 

— from "Talking to My Students about Porn," in The Right to Sex, by Amia Srinivasan.

(What would it be like to discover sex with a wholly open mind, with child-like innocence, without media influence? Instead, we live in a world where porn is now if not ubiquitous then very readily acquired. Granted, my generation sneaked peeks at girly magazines stashed in their dads' garages and  videos pilfered from adult-only backrooms. Sometimes I think I would've benefited from an education of this sort, beyond the romance and passion modeled for me by mainstream film and television. But it's all so performative, so results-oriented; and even when it's different, it's same same.)

The essays in The Right to Sex cover #MeToo, incels, porn, sex positivity, race, TERFs, sex work, carceralism. Clearly, sex is political. Mostly accessibly written, veering slightly into the overly academic, many of the issues described here are at the heart of today's feminist thinking. Endless questions raised, no clear answers offered. 

Desire can take us by surprise, leading us somewhere we hadn't imagined we would ever go, or towards someone we never thought we would lust after, or love. In the very best cases, the cases that perhaps ground our best hope, desire can cut against what politics has chosen for us, and choose for itself.

Essays
Does anyone have the right to sex?"  
Who lost the sex wars? 

Reviews
Is a new book feminism’s next new wave or yesterday’s backlash?  
Who Gets to Be Desirable?  
Questioning Desire 

I didn't know what I wanted

The Art of Vanishing, by Lynne Kutsukake, transported me across time, space, and culture. Set in the 1970s (odd to call it a historical novel when it describes events within my lifetime), it has a peculiar quality of feeling true to its time — that is, I felt like I was discovering a decades-old novel inspired by real-life events, not reading recent release fiction.

My parents didn't know anything about university. My father hadn't even gone to high school — he'd had to start working right after his father died of a heart attack. More and more young people were going to college, though, and my mother wanted for me what other parents did for their children. Yet because it was a foreign world — a world she and my father were afraid of — they could offer no advice or direct encouragement. As a result, they could only give me mixed messages that reflected the confusion and insecurity they themselves felt. It's good to go to university, but university is only for rich people; you deserve the same opportunities as everyone else, but home is best and there are lots of jobs you could do with a high school diploma; and so on, back a forth.

I didn't know what I wanted, either. I was a mediocre student, the kind who was too conscientious not to do my homework but not smart enough to get good marks despite my efforts. I never failed but I never excelled. 

Akemi leaves home to study medical illustration in Tokyo. At the girls' boarding house where her lodging was arranged, she quickly becomes enamored of its most elusive (and somewhat disreputable) resident, Sayoko, an art student from a wealthy family.

Akemi struggles to assert her independence from her family, to see some of the world beyond her small village and study with the aim of establishing a career. Sayoko on the other hand is used to having her wishes granted, sees no need for school, and aspires to a wholly bohemian lifestyle.

We witness Sayoko bossing Akemi around and taking her friendship for granted, but Akemi is too fascinated to be able to extricate herself. 

Things turn strange when Sayoko meets an older couple. They are "artists" who stage happenings; they stay in Sayoko's apartment, and for a while it seems their lives are an endless orgy of alcohol and cigarettes, possibly sex, and just a soupçon of art. And then they're gone.

When Sayoko resurfaces and invites Akemi to one of their happenings in the wilderness, we see that the couple's charisma has cult-like proportions and things may not end well.

This novel is essentially Akemi's coming-of-age story, focusing on the nature of the girls' friendship, and its transience. But with a firm grounding in 1970s Japanese counterculture, it also explores the nature of art (and its transience) and what it is to live an artist lifestyle. 

Excerpt.
Interview, with excerpt.

Activity as volumetric thinker

Looking up at the heavens she howled and cried until she grew hoarse, but even after her voice had given out, her whole body continued to shake. If only she could become a sculpture. Though she had produced many drawings and prints, she had know that she was meant to be a sculptor since her youth. And now, the only way to escape this pain was to become a sculpture herself.

— from 3 Streets, by Yoko Tawada

1. Can I call myself an artist? Yes. Apparently I am emerging. Some of my sculptures are on display at the Montreal Art Center and Museum, June 8-22.

Women sculptors have often been single figures, whose very activity as volumetric thinkers caused consternation. (Penelope Curtis)

2. What am I trying to prove? And I am certain I am trying to prove something. I am, however, not sure if it is to the world or to myself, or to someone else. This is a partial proof that anyone can be an artist. If I can do it, surely anyone can. Or at least anyone who takes the time to respond to a call for submissions, prepare a portfolio and a statement. Anyone who can manage the logistics of exhibiting one's work. Alternatively it is proof that I have some artistic talent. Can both hypotheses be true?

3. Having the goal of exhibition has shaped my time. There are deadlines. Paint must dry. These past months have been exceptionally stress-laden, for life reasons, yet I made a commitment to participate in a group exhibit — an added pressure, but also a distraction from life, even a handy excuse.

4. Would these sculptures have turned out differently without a looming end date? Minimally. In some cases, a decision was forced. I no longer had the luxury of procrastination. But the right decisions were made, of this I am confident. 

5. Some finishing detail was rushed. As I browse work in galleries, I notice the precision I didn't make time for — a sanded contour, a crisper edge, a neater mounting. Such detail can be a differentiator between competent work and confident work. While parts of the process are meditative and slow down time, I need to relearn patience, I need to take more time.

6. How do I title a sculpture? A title can change everything. It gives the viewer a framework, it sets a tone. An artwork must announce itself to the world. It takes a stance. It makes a statement. It tells a story. Sometimes it's an untitled story about nothing in particular.

7. I play a game with myself when I visit galleries and museums: I look at an artwork cold, understand something about it, identify how it makes me feel; then I read the little white label at its side, for its title, year, materials, maybe some other context. And then I look again. This game makes me feel like both a winner and a loser simultaneously, that I am some clever purist exercising her cumulative knowledge and insight but also never fully appreciating what an artist might be trying to say. Is the failing mine or the artist's, I wonder.

8. They say a picture's worth a thousand words. What is a sculpture worth then? Why do we title artworks with words? An artwork can generate a feeling; but a title can help the artwork tell a story. Sometimes I think the title should be able to stand on its own, without the artwork.

9. I read artist statements and laugh at their empty wordiness. I have collected many sample over the years. Enough to fill a book.

10. How do I price a sculpture? Unlike a canvas, I cannot charge by square inch. I can calculate time and materials, but what of found materials? Do I count the time involved for mould-making on top of the time to make the clay original? If I reuse the mould, should I adjust the price? 

11. What is my artwork worth to me? What do I want for it? At this point, mostly I want someone to take it off my hands. I'm not in this for the money. I like the idea of barter pricing, because some things are more useful to me than money. One sculpture is priced at "Removal and disposal of two old hot water tanks from the artist's cellar basement, accessed via trap door and steep step ladder." Another costs "Air duct and dryer vent cleaning in the artist's condo, which may include the removal of animal remains and other debris." But it's only because I'm financially comfortable that I can entertain alternative economic structures.

12. Curatorial philosophies and logistics are confounding me. How do I choose what to display? How many pieces? How do I display them? Painters must choose how to frame their paintings; sculptors must stage their work, in three dimensions. I put my work on a pedestal. Should these platforms conform to each other to forge (a perhaps artificial) cohesiveness of the sculptures, or should they play to each piece's distinctiveness?

13. Where do I find such pedestals? Do I make them, modify them? How do I transport them? How much time have I devoted to the material that supports the art, beyond making the art itself?

Object-sculpture is by it nature materially and spatially assertive, so a sculptor needs logistical and material support as well as the endorsement of others who believe in the undertaking. (Clare Lilley)

14. Here's a smattering of books I've read in recent months (rather, almost years), either directly or tangentially about art and artists, that have shaped some of my art thinking, bringing me to where I am now.

• Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women Since 1945, published on the occasion of the Arts Council Collection Exhibition
• Old in Art School, A Memoir of Starting Over, by Nell Painter
• Like a Sky Inside, by Jakuta Alikavazovic
• Biography of X, by Catherine Lacey
• The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, by Michael Finkel
• The Deceptions, by Jill Bialosky
• Tell Me I'm an Artist, by Chelsea Martin
• Sirens and Muses, by Antonia Angress
• The Art of Vanishing, by Lynne Kutsukake
• The Exhibitionist, by Charlotte Mendelson
• 3 Streets, by Yoko Tawada

15. Why do writers have so much to say about art?

16. There is so much more I want to say about these books, but I'm not sure I remember what. I read differently now. I regret not blogging, not documenting my response, not writing my way through my opinions. 

17. I've been messing around, playing with art, toying with the idea of art school; if not a degreed program, then workshops in exotic places. What do I hope to accomplish with school? More proof, validation? (Of what?) More importantly, what do I hope to learn?

18. I don't even know how to properly clean a paint brush.

19. I have been making things out of clay and, for the most part, casting them. I want to learn about different casting materials. How do I even begin to go about casting bronze? Where do I get some bronze? Can the things I do with clay be adapted for ceramics? How do different types of clay feel, or behave differently? I have trouble finding answers in books or on the internet. I suspect the answers may come from people, possibly school. I want to experiment with materials, to find the material best suited to the story I want to tell.

20. Perhaps I want to prove that art is easier than literature. The price of admission is lower. It's easy to show my work at the little gallery down the street. People actually stop and look. It's less simple to publish a book. There is no little publisher around the corner. There aren't many people who will casually spend 20 minutes with my writing and spend a few hundred or thousand dollars on it.

21. Perhaps this exercise in art was a warm-up. Or merely a procrastination tactic.

Exhibitions are not the end point of a process. Exhibitions start things, and they begin processes of change and reassessment. They don't close a chapter but open it. (Joy Sleeman)

Gaping holes in the body of her argument, 2024; clay, acrylic. On the beach at Benitses, she came apart at the seams, 2022; plaster, acrylic. 
The body is a construct, the body is a triangle, 2023; hydrostone. Jeremy is a delicate flower, 2024; clay, plaster, acrylic.