CHIRP: Chicago Independent Radio Project

Posted by Luscious Gris on July 28, 2008 around 1pm

As a middle-aged white boy, the opportunities for me to dance are few & far between. I don’t know when it became taboo to dance with abandon. Nor do I know when it became even more taboo to take your clothes off and dance with more abandon. But so be it, there’s the unfortunate legacy of an American society founded on Protestant ethics. There’s got to be something left to those of us, and it’s a massive majority, that have a raging need to express a bunch of stuff that is, well, nasty & brutish. I’m told patience is a virtue, and I believe it.

I recall the glory days of the mosh pit. I missed whatever went down in the early 70s, I was stuck in preschool and kindergarten in the suburban wasteland of Northern New Jersey. Now there’s all this crap on TV that glorifies dancing as an art form. That’s fine & dandy, but it’s missing the point. I need the handcuffs off. I don’t care if I look good, if girls think I look sexy. My wife thinks I’m sexy when I feel good, when I’m dancing like I want to, obeying an abstractly choreographed ballet expressing my response to the recycled armageddon(s) forced pitilessly on my generation. I need sanctuary; a time & space where I let go and am able to do whatever I want as the feelings rush at me in a bewildering array of sparking electricity and disorienting maelstrom. Sturm & drang. Whoever sells sanctuary, I’m buying. $12 for an LP that is sanctuary, this is a bargain all day long, any year.

For a long time, I thought the closest depiction of what I wanted to capture on film was the Nirvana video in what felt like a damp, claustrophobic, subterranean venue with ladies moving in slow motion, clad in Anarchy tee-shirts. It never occurred to me then what the slow-motion was doing in this footage to make it work. But this footage says more about the effects of music on a crowd, how a crowd is moved by a few guys and a few instruments on a small stage. A few months ago, MCA here in Chicago showed two recent works by Douglas Gordon.

Douglas Gordon is the Man. Matthew Barney is the Man. Cindy Sherman is the Woman. Sugimoto is the Man. Three Men and One Woman. They are the Three Men & One Woman because they are showing that photography matters. All the criticism and thoughtful essays miss the point. They are just words on a glorious march. The point is they put a spell on you. If you watch the Cremaster films Mr. Barney gave us and don’t get it, that is your fault. If you don’t think Cindy Sherman is brilliant, you’re an idiot. If you stare at Sugimoto shots of water and wonder what he is getting at, you shouldn’t continue to look at art. And if you don’t look at Douglas Gordon’s work and see the footprint of genius, I can’t do nothin’ for ya man.

You gots to take responsibility as a viewer. As a voyeur. Your thing is to give attention. Shut your cell phone off. Shut your blackberry off. Eat something and drink a beer. Get to that place where you are ready to absorb. You don’t need to think or be critical or process or understand. You’re there to absorb. That is where criticism gets in the way. Don’t worry about what the artist intends. The shit in front of you, whether it be a band or a piece of art, is yours. It’s in front of you, take it. Make it yours. That is your responsibility.

Douglas Gordon at the MCA was as good as Jeff Koons. The idiots reviewing Jeff Koons don’t get it at all. Which is a bitter shame, but art criticism is dead and it ain’t my problem. Douglas Gordon rocks my world for a number of reasons. He haunts my dreams with that ridiculous wig, staring at me as if he is Kurt Cobain or he is dressed like Kurt Cobain or he wants to be Kurt Cobain or he wants me to think he is Kurt Cobain. Whatever the fuck is going on with that, he is in my dreams like cheap wallpaper in the houses of my childhood in Northern New Jersey.

Jeff Koons is having a conversation with me. He is not critiquing society or mounting some stupid academic assault. He wants to talk with me. He does not want to explain expound apologize or teach. Sometimes he wants to talk to me because I’m as good a replacement for his son as he is going to get at the moment. Is it really that hard to look at his art and get that? A small child would tell you that if you asked. But you don’t, and shame on you. Kids have stories to tell if you ask.

Douglas Gordon asked me to talk to him at the MCA a few months ago. Who am I to say no? I hope Douglas Gordon reads this and buys me a cup of coffee. I want Douglas Gordon to do other things. Maybe this is selfish. I want Douglas Gordon to continue to make art. I want Damien Hirst to continue to make art. I want Mission of Burma to record more albums and sell them. I want Public Enemy to record more albums and sell them. I do not want Sebadoh to record anything. If Sebadoh had something to say, they had a number of years in which to say it. And they didn’t. Screw them.

I walked in to Douglas Gordon’s room at the MCA, it was dimly lit and it was a Saturday afternoon. My wife walked in with me. And then we both stopped and looked. I do not know how many minutes went by. 2, 10, 30. For a kid with a Ph.D. in science, it is a rare and delicate kind of wonderful to not know how much time has passed.

It got cold in the room. It was creepy. I didn’t feel good, I felt like something real ugly was going to go down. I wanted to get out of the god damned way, but how do you get out of the way of some ugly shit you don’t know the name of? The screen was maybe 12 feet by 4 feet, it was angled 10 or 15 degrees off vertical. No sound, just slow motion crowd dancing. Were they dancing? I don’t know, they were maybe swaying more than dancing. I thought maybe it was a Nazi rally. It had the feel of those gauzy KKK images Christenberry did, the sense that an underbelly you don’t really want to confront is in front of you like an open casket. And if you don’t look, you will always regret this, it will chase you in daylight and in your dreams for years on end.

Slow motion, crowds dancing or moving or swaying or getting ready for something. Stuff in the air, traveling silently, making its presence known after the fact, bending things so shit’s not straight anymore. 2, 10, 30 minutes, maybe even an hour. And then I silently walked up and looked at the small font note near the piece. 1968, Altamont, Rolling Stones, bootleg footage. That was all.

Moments later, my wife’s hand in mine, in a cold sweat, hoping I would not cry in public but unafraid nonetheless, assured that if Douglas Gordon was there he would maybe not mind a 38 year old white boy emotionally distraught in the presence of his work, we approached Gordon work #2. Again, silence. A smaller work, my mind moving to make objective analysis, and frozen moments thereafter. Slow motion, again. Some man gyrating, half-naked, on a stage. Playing to a crowd. The first piece: the crowd. The band is not there, there is only a crowd, a crowd responding to something you do not see and you won’t, a crowd operating according to rules that are not written anywhere and if the rules are broken there is no body of law that will provide remedies. In this second piece: the rock star. Thriving on the energy or the adulation or the attention or the frenetic sexuality of it all. A few moments pass. My wife, rightly, smiles and turns: Morrissey, 80s. She is correct. This is Morrissey. And he looks happy. He is at peace. The work of art has the opposite effect. The blood moves again in my body. I do not expect to die later in the afternoon.

I don’t know shit about what Douglas Gordon thinks about dance. A week ago I saw Public Enemy play Pitchfork. I don’t have anything original or smart to say about the show. Chuck D, Flavor Flav, the Bomb Squad, the guys and girls that make that show work – thank you now, thank you in 1988. For the kids making music, that’s the reason you practice and you work and you strive to get better. It Takes A Nation of Millions was a brilliant album, it is a brilliant album, it ignores time, it laughs at lists. And it should. My generation felt that album smack us like a 30 foot face does when you’re not real ready for it. That shit makes you listen. Rage does that too, and I hope those kids get up for it next weekend.

The crowd at PE was dancing. Kind of. They were moving anyhow. I bet lots of people did what I did after that show. They sat in their backyard or on the couch or in bed, awake. I smoked a cigar and drank scotch and watched all kinds of choreography pass by in my mind, and I underlined passages in Martin Luther King sermons. The last one I read was delivered in Atlanta 6 weeks before Mr. King was assassinated. Got something to say? Don’t make it a game. Learn to write and learn to speak and learn to preach and say what you’ve got to say. People don’t have much time, tell me what you want to say and do it quick & direct. I don’t have time for silly games and academic patter. And neither do you.

Maybe Nirvana’s video captured this essence of dance for me. Or, equally possible, Douglas Gordon got it. Or I will get it. Some nights, I close the door to my studio with the TV on in my bedroom. My wife smiles, she knows I need to do this to remain sane. My dog Lily looks up, and lays back down. She knows I need to do this to remain sane. I mess with my Hasselblad a bit. Check the bullshit. I stare at the little space that is my dance floor. An extra bedroom, my studio. I open the window sometimes. I turn on the ceiling fan. I make the little light on my B&H Zeppelin turn blue. The music comes on. I have dressed for this occasion. I dance for this occasion. I do not have the choreography notated. It is in my head. I close down the analytical space in my brain, the shades are drawn. It is not the time to consider. Or reflect. Or process. It is not appropriate, it is not part of my obligation. I don’t believe in God, but if I meet her I hope she respects this ritual. I am getting as close I can to a raw form of feeling, the kind I believe these musicians mean to inspire. The songs are the same ones that form the soundtrack of my life. I listen to these songs on the Metra in the morning, on the Metra at night, at work when I am not on the phone, on my iPod at the gym, on my iPod on a jog, in the constant & sometimes oppressive silence that is life without a soundtrack.

In the quiet of my studio, I take photos of myself dancing. I think I know why. But I don’t ask the question precisely. I would not ask the same of Douglas Gordon. His work is beyond simple questions about intent. I will arrive there too. Not because I want to. Because I have to.

A praying mantis on the court, I can’t be beat.

A preying mantis on the court, I can’t be beat.

Do what you have to.