going home 8 May 2022

The day started with the hairless cat show. Duke, the enormous (but gentle) “AmStaff” (American Staffordshire, aka huge Pit Bull) being particularly motherly on the Mother's Day.

The morning's entertainment was provided in part by the two hairless kittens:

Quick visits to Berkeley Bowl and Oliver's, then a lovely lunch in the midst of the Mothers' Day Crazies at Catelli's – they handled it well. And a miraculous, traffic free drive from Cloverdale all the way to Albion: slow cars behaving proactively, easy pullouts for the speeders behind us. 

Yup, that's 84.2 MPG for the whole 408 mile round trip. Nine going, Prius Prime.

I will never look at a cat the same way again.

Looking backward a week later, Rochelle and I have different take-aways, but similar thoughts about our cultural infusions. 

SFMoMA comes off best. R's thought: “I liked it better this time. I saw some things that inspired me, and that will probably find their way into my own work.” Mine: in sympathy with my father's resentment of “artists who are known only because of their talent for self-promotion,” I note that much of the work that gets hung at the MoMA is not much better than the work I do, or that Sienna or Rochelle do. It gets hung simply because, for some reason, it attracts the attention of a curator or someone in a position to buy and donate. Photography in particular, but “modrun painting” is, as my father qas always quick to observe, is also subject to this phenomenon. Back in the middle of the MoMA matrices there is a photo of a carefully painted set of 256 colors – not the famous 256 colors that ruled the web back when color monitors were primitive and capable of only 256 “web safe” colors. Kudos to the artist for coloring within the lines, and no doubt this painting took many days to complete, but damn it! (I hear my father's voice) it is NOT ART. The painting above and to the right, and the Calder mobile below left: THAT IS ART. 

I think of my friend Stephen Morris, who banged his head against gaining recognition for his very competent and enjoyable writing. I am so glad that I never jonesed for fame.