© Supreme NY 1994 all rights reserved
1) The first day I went to work for Christopher, he totally flipped out on me because I didn't know who the Japanese architect, Kisho Kurakawa was. My first job in New York, and it was as if it was explicitly Christopher's way of reminding me not to dare assume I ever had it made, and especially with him. Christopher would get in touch with me when he needed me, at first either by calling the flat where I was sleeping on the floor at, or then later on, by word of mouth out at broken stem park. The thing I had going for me, the only thing I had going for me in NY, was my coke connection in Pittsburgh—pharmaceutical grade nose eruption that was sold to me at Pitts rate, penny pen rate designed to sell off quick in such the depressed cash poor steel town that it will always be. Marco would hold it for me but not for long, I'd have to like leave immediately, as he would only reserve it for a few hours. The only way for me to make it in New York, was to survive off doing this, to leave Manhattan, drive all the way to Pittsburgh, hellride with felony stuffed in an old Cabbage Patch doll all the way back (though the feeling of finally gliding into Manhattan with my coke on lock, is my all time favorite interesting drug). Christopher would usually order a half once with some stray grams all, all at once. I would serve it up at his old studio, a renovated studio from the 70's that had been supposedly evacuated by George Maciunas, in what was once then a derelict Soho. The first time, that first time, Christopher asked me if I wanted to partake, which I was so destitute at the time, I never refused anything free (even my own coke I was selling). He would cut rails in this antique opium tray he had had—cutting the lines in the corners against the wall of the tray and snorting it up super quick from out the corner—it was real efficient in regards to not wasting any precioso grains (Christopher was a terribly inventive person) and he never failed to mention it was direct homage to Serra's legendary, eponymous thrown lead in the corner of the room action works from the late sixties. Depending on when I got there, I would help stretch canvases, or build and prepare crates, fix walls in his studio, help pack and ship paintings, or whatever else he had had. Sometimes though, besides selling him primo minor, there would be nothing else for me to do, and Christopher would go out of his way to find me something, anything, so I could get in some hours. Sometimes the tasks were comically obscure. There was never a time we would not file grains though. He was real real productive and we would do as much as we wanted and otherwise just work for long, long stretches. It reminded me of Lance Armstrong, when Armstrong was talking about winning the Tour De France, they asked him what his favorite part was, if it was the winning, and Armstrong said his favorite part was training (which actually meant his favorite part, was getting caked to the batter up on steroids, Armstrong lifting anything and everything in the damn gym with his juiced brains out.) And that's what it was like for Christopher, he just wanted to gargle water and putter around, be god of his studio and that's about it—he didn't ever go out or even attend openings (especially his)—the means was like the ends, and that's why he produced such an astounding manœuvre—he was really the best New York artist of all time. Christopher would pay for the pilons I bought him, let me do as much as I wanted with him, let me even keep, walk home with the rest we both didn't do, and then he paid me generously in cash for my services rendered as his studio assistant. My entire practice and methodology, everything I do as a curator now, my entire sensibility has been forged and informed as a direct result from working as Christopher's studio assistant and that's something you just cannot so easily come up upon. Christopher said you had to read materials non-stop (that's what he called Artforum, October, Yale Press, anything he could get his capering hands on: materials), you simply needed to never not inhale material in order to survive, it was like mandatory you constantly consume competitively and especially even more so than any meek privilege grad student. Christopher said when he was an assistant for Joel Shapiro, he would usually just go home, quarantine with a dime and a little pink plastic Baskin Robbins spoon and just read in his room and never come out—Christopher would leave just to go to work for Joel or to get more garb and Christopher did this for years. By a certain point he had done so much, read so much, when he came out of hiding, he found he was smarter than anyone in NY, and he was right!
2) When I met Chloë, she was going by Beau —Chloë, playing the consumate arriviste when she first got to New York, nicknamed herself Beau, her way of re-inventing herself upon moving to the city. Beau, the first four letters in 'beautiful', as if to say, you-with-your-heart-turned-left (and I was on the right) Chloë, will only experience incomplete beginnings of beginnings, which will inevitably never, like ever or never ever, bring to bear, nor be fully seen out through to the end (Chloë's deceptively approachable physiognomy, deceptively easy-as-it-goes demeanor will only spell for you black Christmas.)
3) In the doc, as I sort of predicted, I was of course no where even near mentioned. Slightly relieved though —everybody looked preposterous against the sex-in-the-city-marimbas-about-town-editing and professionally criminal bad photography where all interviewees look like they have Parkinsons. But I've been thinking about it lately, I mean, it's not a big deal, though considering I was the one who introduced Wool to James in the first place (And to think even amidst James' misfocused whipping boy annoyance of me the entire time.) Was it not I who ushered the eponymous Wool treatment black and white stencil letter Supreme logo (actually even my idea), which would become the hypertrophied global put-the-Hell-in-Helvetica logo that would mark upon every (Get A Life) of Pablo wanna-be and Bobby front foot flip come lately, like stained in wool lambs marked for slaughter that they all were?
4) If something isn't painfully obvious, it gets beclouded in the vapour of palimpsest of surfaces, it's always been that way, and the Supreme documentary certainly does nothing to dispel such notion. As the ring of the name seems to determine the status of the player, just as much as whatever it is they may have been known for. Harold's last name was an authoritatively sounding Hunter, and look at Chloë's, hers chimes like landing clock with stately sounding exotic regency.
James certainly embodies what his last name sounds like. A mutant bumpkin, a giant alien pizza slug: Jebbia.
5) In the SUPREME doc, they also try to identify the 90's downtown skate scene as some kind of "global movement". A practice without precepts, tenants, dictum or theorists; surrealism without Breton, futurism without manifesto? Harry Jumonji calligraphic graff tag bangers, the new New York School abstract expressionist marks? The Art of the Shoe Deal? And is there possibly any way we can shoehorn KAWS/Barry McGee/quarter trick pony Shepard Fairey and Dave Kinsey (all who refuse to actually learn to ride a skateboard) into our "movement" somehow??
6) Random Fab Five Freddy is presented in the doc as pathetically close to it as some Getrude Stein like character as our supposed streetwear "movement" had had, or at least now they're attaching him to the doc like he is, or like he was, in a not too hard to figure out, for sake of simply using his YO MTV RAPS! name to attract more fire power. I'll say this much though, I never seen a Fab Five Freddy at the banks or like at Astor or ever on Lafayette, especially at the beginning. It's not like Fab Five Freddy was watching Goldfish in '94 on the unforgiving grid of Sony tv's outside the shop sitting on the sidewalk on the pavement with the whole shoot and lot of us all. Fab Five Freddy has no recollection whatsoever of say, when Carroll would do the thing where Carroll wore all black Half Cabs with the black soles and then he had all white laces and a backwards fitted baseball cap thing going (If you know what I'm talking about, you know precisely what I'm talking about.) Fab Five Freddy knows even less about skateboarding than just-being-from-Chicago-isn't-good-enough potato faced twee-hop faux-guarde materialist Virgil Abloh, if you can believe such is even possible.
7) Anyways, the doc was second, thirdhand embarrassing, real depressing really, and especially, especially considering how everyone was, or like were, once just so effortlessly fashion forward downtown teenagers at one time. But now, everyone interviewed was giving off this like hustle-town middle-aged malaise kiosk-best version of themselves, a counter-intuitive-to-what-our-scene-once-thought-it-was, of now on-demand crowd friendly enterprising exuberance (when in the past, to think, we used to spit on anyone if they were even confused for not living on Manhattan). It reminds me of Sigfried Kraucer, observing the modern world, like the Supreme doc, itself has taken on that everyman photographic face, striving to be absorbed into the spatial continuum that yields everyman snapshot faces. The cachet that the East Village skate art and club scene once had had, was all but foreclosed by this 2021 version of New York as un-intentional and ill-advised parody of New Zoo York direction of the doc's I'm-a-millennial-therefore-I-wasn't-really-there-but-I'm-going-to-direct-this-doc-anyways-and-because-I-am-doing-it-I-automatically-deserve-a-goldstar perspective incompetent outsider director now, and it was all also compounded by the aging GenX'er cast of Kids' willingness to get interviewed now (a willingness that betrayed their original refusal posturing of the past, which defined the entire scene and which was it's original primary appeal). They even got Bennie Gold to say something, I barely know who he is.
8) Take Rosario for instance. Rosario, used to like like to go out, wasn't afraid of walking the Bowery late at night, wasn't exactly afraid of having a good time, ya know? The thing I think about, well what I think about about with her the most, was, was she was always like, totally just kind of down for practically anything back then it seemed. I think I also vaguely remember her running around with the ACT-UP group Fierce Pussy even, she was also friends with James Romberger too. But now, Rosario's just another Samsung haircut talking head now wrapped bedded in People Magazine/NYPD Blue aura, where otherwise, think about it, decades ago Rosario modeled for X-Girl, or like, Rosario making out with Sadie Bennet in the Free Kitten video that barely aired on MTV, I mean remember that? In the doc, Rosario was now just going on and on about Harold in a way you could tell she wouldn't if he wasn't dead and she taking it upon herself as designated voice of some essential female consciousness condolence of our old fluttered scene with such filtered through corporate greeting-card reverie, as if what she said had been approved beforehand directly by the Harold Hunter Foundation, as if Harold had died so unexpectedly like Frank O' Hara or something, instead of by baby teeth smoking himself to death (and to think the majority of her and Harold's interactions, I do remember, were her annoyed superior-sister-like-rebuff's to Harold's usual spinster you-happen-to-be-right-here-infront-of-me-right-at-this-moment-so-I-may-as-well-hit-on-you-perpetual-horn-dog-demeanor). Not to diminish the tragedy of poor Harold (though he had been known to get so coked up to the lungs, as to not be capable of dialing a telephone). But you know, so much about Harold got lost into the made for soundbite import of the ready-to-convince-you-and-everyone-and-anyone-and-the-most-people-as-possible enterprising stoke of the Cinemax doc now. I mean, I remember when the scene back then, was just for us.
9) And anyways, look who Rosario ended up with. It's one of life's disappointments. I'm not too terribly surprised. I'm not surprised with anything anymore. I mean, look at all these exceptional women. I eyeball who they're actually with, with perverse bad faith satisfaction now. What's the use of being in Kids, when you end up marrying someone with ankle socks, and who's not even the least bit like alty?? (Not like Rosario is even avant la lettre anymore though, just look at her 1M followers means nothing Bed Bath and Beyond IG.)
10) I was talking about this to a colleague recently and she suddenly, unexpectedly got real bent out of shape.
She goes, Yeah, we are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love and the giving of herself without enjoyment. So who is cruel there, man or woman?
I said, yeah, I've never done that. I've never like insisted a woman like, love me, even though she doesn't. I've never done any of those things. And I've certainly never had anyone just stick it out for the sake of my feelings (especially in NY!). All I ask for is don't cheat (a lot, too much to ask, I know), and at least have the decency not to pivot onto one of my friends when I bring you around my crowd, like say, the siren Brett in The Sun Also Rises. And besides, I'm like, like allowed to have like an opinion, or my own opinion. The world is simply just rife in poor choices and decisions (and it only seems to be getting worse.) The way of the land is predicated on suffering because of other's bad choices (such a timeless literary theme).
Relationships in the city pale beyond postmodern now, and they weren't so much interested in you in particular, but more caught up in the ceaselessly unfurling situation where it only makes easy sense to play out to land on you to serve such function (think of American Psycho parodic depiction of how Pat Bateman served the insert-fiancé-here function, for his self absorbed debutante girlfriend). There's death of the author, and now there's death of the boyfriend. People are not so much mugging down with you, they could be mugging down with the sum total of their expectations and their projections and general anticipation and identification of such onto you, and you can totally tell sometimes, how you just so happen to be fit right there and it's all the main reason. Same's the way women let you be fitted into their life. Convenience, the sexiest attribute apparently.
11) We are all born in the spectacle of the world. Walter Benjamin predicted for capitalism the cultural need to compensate for the lost aura of art and artist with the "phony spell" of the commodity and the star. Supreme is this exacerbated progression, serving well beyond that same eternal phony spell tendency.
Supreme mimics the human formed (un)natural phenomena of subject object relations. Just as country or state or city or center is the fount to which holds and administers meaning and everything seductive and desirable for its subject citizens, so does Supreme become Trumpian slash and burn, run-away-with-it-all-including-the-bathwater-and-the-baby repository, the fundament through which everything lusty flows now through to us (when previously, cultural phenomena was well able to make its way to us on its own without Supreme help). My Bloody Valentine, Jeff Koons, Neil Young, Mark Gonzales, even World Industries adjunct micro brands from the 90's, are all affiliated roads that flow from Supreme's robe. To say: there's nothing too culturally obscure by which Supreme could not still have you pegged.
At once décollage (a dismantling of an image) and blithe détournement (image subversion by appropriation), to own something Supreme once signified a mastery by the subject, but the dork trick to it all is is that we in doing so, all willingly contribute to a liquidation and desublimation of Supreme's co-opted, hijacked once quasi-sacred forms (un-replicatable cultural phenomena which embodies the Zenith of contemporary Western culture). Jürgen Habermas wrote "Nothing remains from a desublimated meaning or a destructured form; an emancipatory effect does not follow." The image becomes in this case, unfairly democratized for a lumpen petit bourgeois' (read fourteen year old from the suburbs to every thirty year old who considers Brian Jonestown Massacre an important rock band) access and consumption of otherwise invested forms once hard wrought by previous faithful practitioners, which completely now erodes any authority the representational object once had had. Think: If-I-ruled-the-world-Kareem wearing a Supreme sweatshirt in Trilogy, then a ten year old girl in 2016 at a Quinceañera with a Supreme sticker on her laptop, to 2022 Kareem wearing a Supreme shirt on a podcast in Fort Worth to diminishing returns of withering effect.
This precarious slippage of free wheeling semiotic symbols is by no means confined to the post Fordist late late capitalism heterotopia of our times. This same desublimation of unstable symbols can be seen as far back as even 1830, for instance in Balzac's story "Sarrazine". The male narrator in the story becomes enthralled with Zambinella, a singer who's actually a castrato (a castrated man posing as a woman). Not the only slippage in this story, there's another, which has a more direct correlation to Supreme. The narrator is hanging around Zambinella's handlers, and they lament the new social system of new bourgeois promiscuous paper money of the time (as opposed to old landed gentry land, and resource holdings). One of them says "No one asks to see your family tree because everyone knows how much it cost" (which could either mean that a) anyone can get a family tree fabricated now because of availability of technology and resources to do so, or b) it could either mean that new wealth usurped a formerly dominant feudal ruling class, that now patriarchal lineage matters much less), which, if you think about it, is the characters' in the Balzac story way of complaining about a ten year old girl at a Quinceañera with a Supreme sticker on her laptop.
But even describing this Supreme paradigm seems frightfully out of date, as it has already gone much much further beyond. As it is harder to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, the desublimation of privileged forms is logically pushed past any semblance of limit, into advancing to re-fashioning (re-branding - I know, a term I hate to even see anywhere here) products we never even cared about; Nerf, Igloo, Kraft Mac—the desublimation of products that were never even really sublimated in the first place*. Supreme implicates our level of materialism that may not actually exist, tricks us into into fetishizing products, no matter how mundane. The Duchampian move of branding a single Supreme brick now only but seems so quaint.
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*Some would point out, products getting appropriated would actually be subliminatory and that could hold to be true, though maybe just in the immediate short term. However, the downside is, once Supreme becomes played out, anything now associated and appropriated could well loose any grace or autonomy and currency it once had had—so because it has passed through Sup hands, it eventually becomes desublimated, and this is the model I am working off of (products already sublimated before they become co-opted by Sup). Maybe this was the same revelation which caused Morrissey to back out after the harsh truth of the camera eye photos where shuttered—he realized perhaps at the last second, that he would become Supreme's desublimated subject (but I suspect, my guess, was he probably just didn't like the photo of himself. Christ knows Morrissey has been desublimated by Marr repeatedly and the world over by now, but still somehow survives. Look at all the previous iconic photos of him, that Supreme could not rise to the occasion to fall in line with. The photographer so predictably fetishizing their gear in typical fashion probably, Terry Richardson un-creatively using too many light stands, to where it makes anyone and everyone look like they have Parkinsons, and yes, life is a pigsty.)
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By octopussing anything and everything, a once sleek and minimal modern elegantly desolate ska-shop, now descends into hyper-stratified heterogeneous-glut riven Hieronymous Bosch slopbucket of capitalism schizophrenic landscape with: haute couture printed with bloated colorfield imagery empty symbols, littered next to bodega Croatian gangster terry cloth jumpers, flea market sandals, flea market mesh jerseys and Wallabees, more Cross Colors redux, stock VF corp brand label apparel (Lee and Wranglers and Haynes and Vans, that are still through-the-cathedral-roof expensive), and clothes that can look simultaneously cheap and expensive (confusing consumers into thinking it's some kind of avant chic), garments designed to stand out in media images but are completely impractical and ill-functional and ill-housed and embarrassingly over the top in any normal everyday setting. Any and any rapper is invited to celebrate their own self mythologized level of materialism. Because consumers have never seen anything like this, this level of hyper pluralist remediation, its unrecognizability, economizes on the public's blind spots, into Haim Steinback devil like mantle of intrigue.
A certain restlessness seems to unconsciously now pervade Supreme's gaze now more than ever, a compulsive pathological restlessness, that the once supposed carefully restrained pop curator criteria now over stimulated by global success, looses patience in waiting, waiting for something that embodies Western excellence coup de foudre, and we now find ourselves watching Strobeck misguided, leaving New York skourism turned campaign comb the land look-at-me-I-get-to-book-flights footage clips of Bill's oogling of thirteen year old Italian childrenboarders who actually skate on the same level, look exactly like other American kids they are actually mimicking, who could have easily been found lurking NY, or anywhere else.
12) True story. My second cousin who I was not to at all close with, who I barely knew, died unexpectedly, tragically and I attended his wake. When I was in kindergarten, my mom and his grandma organized a play date at his grandma's house. We were playing with his cowboy guns with belts and holsters and I remember thinking the embossed leatherish holster belts held some kind of superficial to a kid (me) appeal. Towards the end of the play date, my second cousin out of nowhere, gets super possessive with his toys and his room, he flips the script on me and starts raging angrily right at me and the play date came to an abrupt close with me having to be ushered out of his room, and his enabling grandma conceding, saying to me and my mom, just chalking it up to him being a characteristically angry child sometimes, and like oh, well what can one do? He had grown up a relatively normal like baseball kid, was definitely never a skater. As an adult he owned some kind of construction business and had just received an advance windfall for a new project for some new client. To celebrate, he took the advance, and traveled across state lines to a casino and tragically died of a heart attack in the parking lot when he was leaving (which, I could only assume was a heart attack brought on, induced by the catastrophic and very likely outcome of loosing his client advance, an advance even probably needed to buy materials for the next project - this is mostly speculative). During his wake they projected a slide show of photos of him throughout his years. Ominously, one photo would cycle through and repeat of my second cousin wearing a couldn't be more random JFA t-shirt. You could tell he just somehow ended up with a JFA t-shirt, got photographed with it and it was now looping in a carousel cycle at his wake: the paisley JFA block letter logo, a free floating symbol on the picture of my dead second cousin. It could have not been more random, there was no one to tell, only I noticed.
13) Sandy pines valley rural with heather, clasped beneath the foothills as we drove down the dirty Pennsylvanian expressway.
14) I'm staring at a black and white photo of Stanley William Hayter that Hans Namuth took of him in '73. Hayter's granddaughter is the executor of his estate now, and has been an absolute spike in my side, on every run of the rill, like, throughout the entire process of organizing for the display of this small suite of drawings I'm stewarding for at the Jewish Museum. From very grim beginning, every interaction, she's run the lash, and has been an up the mountain skirmish the entire way, fraught with her unwarranted, unnecessary, misdirected skepticism and antagonism un-towards me (It reminds me exactly how Mne Kandinsky treated, how she simply abused Castelli.) She first took issue with the location of the display by the stairwell, which actually, has always been my favorite place to stumble upon unexpected surprises from lesser seen corners of the collection. And I'm not just saying that, I really mean it—throughout the years I've always pointed out that the stairwell is easy breath from the programmatic weight the main exhibitions tend to bear, the line of a dozen or so works hung there, functioning like an underground river that transmits some kind of not so obvious curatorial pulse, some alternate sensibility left delightfully understated. I'm only an associate, therefore lucky myself to even be mounting this display, but I've been treated by her, as if I somehow have undersold this project to the board (and on the contrary, this project has only been but passed down to me). But by her take, it's as if I'm somewhat even now, complicit in the sweeping historicity of Hayter not being considered a more notable Abex-er (it's not my fault he didn't live in New York in the forties, and he was also, more than others, also associated with Parisian surrealism, so there's maybe perhaps, I don't know, considerably less purity in his stylistic intentions by North American standards?). And anyways, this installation just simply serves as part of our more modestly organized Vanguard Series, featuring a small raft of lesser known Hayter drawings, and not his prints, which he is more primarily known for. There aren't very many drawings directly from the collection either, the others have been on loan directly from the Hayter Foundation. Hayter's granddaughter has just been bad badgering me about guaranteeing the loans be acquired by the museum, which beyond me submitting them to the advisory board and then them maybe later getting sent to collections committee (which only meets twice a year), there's not too terribly much I can do beyond that. Besides, I don't work retail, I'm after all, not a DEALer, and it's simply just supremely tacky and just in poor taste to vulgarly keep on insisting I exhaust, go beyond my the duties associated with my stewardship, like, for me to practically guarantee their acquisition of purchase. I did though, give her the name of the Director at ACA, and I am actually going to check back up on it, but I'm sure their program is held quite firm for the rest of the next fiscal year, and it's not like they're going to just rearrange their budget for some Stanley William Hayter drawings, not even his prints, but who knows?
15) Out of James' most notable quote whoopers (and there were too many), the one that still rings in my craw, was the time he blasted at me "Don't blame me, blame yourself," in a situation where a) I was not blaming him for anything b) I was just trying to explain to him how shipment details on the other end had gotten botched, upon them admitting to the clear oversight on their side overseas. His Frankenstien head "uncool joker" (Barbara Kruger quote) overconfidence contaminated the outside, unable he was to rein in his volatile emotions and especially towards his employees, and such was he able to destabilize any shared consensus by the sheer force of the dependable gale of his own stupidity. Thought is like climate and chemistry, and it even has its own physical type. He could take his misinterpretation hot take of any situation and emotional air raid it back, that left most too exhausted or bleary eyed to even want to re-explain the part exactly where he was clearly mistaken. Or like rudders spinning in mud, you would explain something to him precisely at the fork in logic right where he was incorrect, but then he'd correct his view with the information you had just given him, but even with his correction, there was still something significant that he was missing, which would be impossible sometimes to pinpoint or re-correct right on the spot, and you were too exhausted to further set him straight, and he leaves where you still have to work around his miscomprehension. "Don't blame me, blame yourself," not at all making sense in any respect to the situation, also serving the worst career advice I have ever received.
Bullwhacker James was buxom, brawny, always in his mind's eye many steps ahead, while still retaining a shabby charisma that went far in a world easily charmed by un-intimidating charisma. And despite how abominable he was, there was an undercurrent of how you just also still felt kind of bewilderingly sorry for him through it all somehow, which made it impossible for you to intrinsically hate him, despite the times he was really giving you something you should and would rightfully hate him for.
It was uncanny how his instincts would always guide him in picking out the most blithe, musky, and hideous shoe tank out of any collection to rep, despite him being the king street wear scion with the means to pick anything freely at his disposal. I often think of one pair he wore upon his own choosing that looked like army ambulance for snow climate in the distant future. Women really responded to him too, as he was high profile enough to attract model types. But he had a certain innate, Britt cornfed "Jebbiahness" that made them probably feel maybe unconsciously somewhat sorry for him too, in a way that didn't outshine or outfox them, didn't threaten their ontological status in regards to him, and then they could still feel superior, while at the same time freely submitting to his brutish blitheness. Seeing this in the framed context within the atmosphere of New York, also gave such dynamic a kind of timelessness, you could see how this has been going on for centuries and here it is now.
A girl would walk out of the shop without buying something and he'd probably say something insipid like "I'd shag her stupid" or "I'd recon to clean her clock", all the while never failing to impart his unsolicited wisdom about women and what they really wanted, this through the lense of his loophole situation, where he would still win with the opposite sex despite him making the worst decisions always with all the other things in his control. Considering the things he could afford to get away with, he would impart the actions of such dynamic onto you, in respect to him giving you his advice about girls, in a way with him sort of reveling in the fact that if you actually had the latitude to talk to girls the way he did, there would be no way you would quite find success like he, but there's still some sincerity in the delivery, and you would just have to take it and not call him out on it. But then he would do the thing where he would also just give you the most overtly bad advice about women, in a way that was totally condescending to you too, reveling in his privilege right in the open, but it could be framed around conversation that implies he's somewhat on your side you, kind of your peer.
The worst thing about it was, thinking I could actually win him over with a certain frankness, but he would either blankly go along and for once say nothing, or he could even shoot back, full snorting cruelty on display, saying something demeaning untowards in blatant, gnarling how-dare-you-even-try-to-appeal-to-the-level-with-me.
Well, actually the worst worse thing was, was me introducing Moose headed James to Christopher and thinking this would get me in better ranks with James. Immediately when I introduced them, it could not have been more instantly apparent I was in what could have been the record shortest NY second, tossed and cast aside, an extra in the background of the movie scene of their James Jebbia and Christopher Wool meeting (or me being just being unborn into complete non existence à la the documentary.) It was supremely stupid of me to have tried to come up by mixing these two worlds. Later, when it was set Christopher was going to do the Supreme logo, I didn't get so much as kickdown or free gear as a token of thanks or even just thanks, James just notified me the project was going forward, a smug, optimistic tone in his voice that also said my status with him hasn't really changed. Somewhere within the year, I was unfairly dismissed by him, the reason I'm still not sure of (it seemed too futile to ask) and the logo got done. Don't blame me, blame yourself indeed.
16) It was the last days of Disco and Mars would soon be shuttered. Every floor was riven with the throngs who came out now, teeming from everyone with their second and third and fourth and fifth cousins in tow. The venue had become exhausted well past pass capacity—a population explosion onto which what once seemed like our own private beach club. The once adventurous, anarchic lawlessness of Mars, now descended into real danger and real crime by all new yahoos, soulja boy junior wanna-be's, and actual street thugs who looked nothing like Capone Noriega album cover.
Even I could no longer peddle my wares there, the spot had become too hot and chaotic to transact comfortably now. In what used to be just easy money while out having fun with downtown heads and the usual mud larks from Washington Square, then became supremely annoying with aleatory out of towners who didn't know how to inconspicuously act during transaction at calamitous risk of bust, to then finally the Mars scene fully descending, spelling upon vaguely threatening aura as the new ruthless who came late, now staked claim by force of willed pitbull dealer monopoly, treating Mars like project block. (And this wasn't just mere financial set back for my modest coffers, at one time in old New York, a safe reliable source for strong dance floor coke had practically been regarded as noble, public service.)
I was just coming from working at Christopher's, didn't feel particularly like going back to the flat yet, to the point of at last minute deciding on walking past Mars, thinking maybe, perhaps, I don't know, Mars wouldn't be too terribly bad tonite. The not too many people looming outside, which I took as maybe a good sign, was soon betrayed when I levitated inside and saw it was stacked up yet again.
Though considered the golden age of hip hop, you would never have guessed it here and now. Too many rappers every where, too many MC's who'd arrived for self promotional feeding frenzy upon the dead carcass that was now Mars. Every MC lite according to themselves, was illest—as the topos of self empowerment in hip hop never not veered into baseless boasting of egotistical overconfidence. The otherwise enchanting samples from the abundant songs on the late night Stretch and Bobbitto radio show, where now nowhere to be heard here in the dronecoma warehouse. It was almost like a different genre of music completely. Any semblance of melody was replaced by someone braying over the mic, or belting monosyllabic shout outs, chants and jump hikes. When bantering between songs, having only one vocal tone setting: ayeo ayeo frantic hectic yo.
More crowded than Mecca, and there was no one I could immediately see who I knew.
Master of ceremony rasped the mic,
Let me clear my throat
Let me clear my throat
Let me clear my throat
Let me clear my throat
The over affirmative crowd sound activated right at the beginning of the first round of Let me clear my throat, signaled it as unremarkable populist hit that was actually just barely good enough, for as great as New York was thought to be, you could see a superficial public consensus representative of a sample of the entire nation in action and on display, and the actual everyman (and woman) pedestrian criteria of the city summoned live in real time.
The tragedy of the commons crowds don't recognize the real locx, and here, in what's practically my living room, I'm total stranger now, in what was otherwise hard wrought for me so to tame such land. Max's Kansas City had been closed well over a decade now, and even bumping in the bathroom right now seems like too much a hassle and I procrastinate waiting in line.
My thoughts still amplified, though I'm waning unstimulated, even the drink line is like waiting for a crowded waterslide.
Like a mirage in the mouth of the dessert, I see Chloë talking to Yuki, Watanabe (my nickname for him, Wannabe Watanabe) and Mark Ronson, and maybe what looked was Moby.
I go up next to them, they see me, and I do the awkward wired thing where I don't fully commit to breaking up their conversation, I'm so wired/not wired that my social skills are dulled and I stand lamely next to them waiting for their convo to be over and its actually really no big deal, even though it's something I would ordinarily be cautious about. Not really an indication of me cloying to the situation (as say, an onlooker might think). It's just I see Chloë now, and what the hell, we're both out and I don't feel like I have some false pride in myself that I feel the need to uphold right now, like about waiting to talk with Chloë. This I consider like, the opposite of playing games. I'm being authentic I feel, at the cost of caring about me profilin' and that's fine. I feel good anyways, real satisfied from working with Christopher earlier, and I feel self assured enough to let this wall of formality fall, not concerned at all how I look now. I figured maybe Chloë would sense this, no big deal.
Beyond no room for mistakes Chloë looked at me with sharp gale of her judgement, removed and withdrawn, plush back now in the better situation she exists in. Our road trip to Pittsburgh may have happened as long as never ago. She was now looking at me as if I had become a stranger to myself, like, as if, I wasn't even aware of my general overall condition. There was also a flick of glint in her scrutinizing demeanor that unconsciously even exposed the mercenary nature of women in general too, with which men are sized up and pitted against each other in the prize eye of a woman who is MC Hammer of battle of the sexes. As high as I was, even I could still see this, or no, as high as I was, there is no way I could toss such observation aside. But here in this instant Chloë had it all twisted all wrong in her vulcanized benevolence that was baked into her recent comeuppance (some movie about the last days of New Wave, that she had been casted in written and directed by Wit Stillman) and also Chloë's general goodie goodie girl Holly Hobby New England upbringing. I had just got done working at Christopher's studio, my nose throbbing like Tucan Sam and so what?! I was goddam Christopher Wool's studio assistant now, and although to mere pedestrian laying cursory eye upon me now, in what could look like third act in a Larry Clark photo essay, the reality of it is, is it's sometimes a highly unorthodox route to get to an art that which does not exist yet. Surely, something that if she really considers herself an artist in NY, she should have enough insight to internalize, but no. Who was she to judge my situation anyways? I'm just like, using my givens, taking what ever little, little man means I have been able to harness, and use it as a way to somehow get myself off somewhere better. Dreaded is an understatement to make about my runs to Pittsburgh certainly, but it needed to get done, and I did it and kept myself out of the law and harm's grasp. And so what, should I have not gotten wired working today with Christopher, for just the mere supremely unlikely possibility that I was going to somehow impossibly bump into her today and make a new favorable impression upon her gracious graces, even though, otherwise, up to now, I have yet been unable to do so? A favorable impression which would have made sorry little difference anyways, because despite her girl next door approachability and demeanor, she was impenetrable Nordic ice queen, except to a lucky tentative five or six lucky bastards who slunk upon the land and her. Well behaved studio assistants rarely make marks on this world, and isn't it not this same kind of unconventionality that later gets so exalted after the fact anyways, by women just like Chloë, in interviews, when it would be well safe nor risk to now exude in such documentary interview endorsements?
After about twenty minutes the goons around Chloë leave and she's tentatively and unlikely by herself.
The beserker frantic club lighting, like strip center commerce malfunctioning in the dark, moved across Chloë's face, her face reflecting an in the knowin' modernity.
I approach her in a way that looks immediately suspect.
Hey-hey-hey!, I on the spot lamely say with overt, conspicuous self willed insufficiency, idiotically greeting her. The way she reacts to me, I instantly sense the superficiality in her judging me, she's actually judging me now for lamely standing by them and waiting! She's actually harshing, despite my good faith and I cannot believe this. I can not believe this. And why would I even think just coming over, why should I dare think she should be so approachable and easy to fall into casual convo with? But it's a reality check 101 and actually, yet so typical of the world after all, confirming even Chloë isn't immune from such deficiency in judgement, and blind spots the land.
Hi Lockman, Chloë, not missing a beat, calling me by my last name for the first time, putting me in my proper little place, now far off away, tossed to the shoreline.
What's goin on, what's goin down? So high and stupid I'm being, and I can't help it now. I can feel myself confirming Chloë's worst judgements on me.
Nothing. I can't stand it here. I'm going home, Chloë curtailing the interaction, now wanting having as little as possible to do with this needlessly spitfire tire flat situation.
You seen Gio? Lamely straining to have her stay, I'm so slipping on the spot and its damn the only thing I can think to say in this instant.
Why do want to see Gio? You hate Gio, Chloë, extra sharp and sober, not skipping a beat,
No, I don't hate Gio, I don't like hate Gio, c'mon, coked up and facetiously trying to be cute, saying in a way implying it demands opening up a whole little discourse between us..
Not responding, when she could say something but she doesn't, it's like she senses I wasn't seriously asking about him anyways, which she would be right about.
I don't hate Gio okay?
Ok, forget it. It doesn't matter.
Hey, hey, what is that? What's like up with you? Firing me now too?
You know, you probably owe James an apology, Chloë, completely off base and a tag banger out of line, and I have no idea what leads her to believe whatever made her make such ludicrous, such preposterous statement. I was like actually, like unfairly fired after working, securing the Wool logo deal, and on top of that, she thinks something happened because of me, something happened or she was told who knows what, and now for her to, to say such a thing. The way she said I owe James, I owe James, James of all people, of all people, some kind of "apology". Chloë, with this supremely misguided air of smugness and now insultingly unquestioning resolve she possesses in the shadowy dancehall, like the movie Trading Places, once-friends-now-no-more, tough and indifferent big city finality and it's all just too rich to take now, especially from once dear Chloë.
The only thing I owe James is a hard time, I growl back.
It was immediately apparent when I moved to the we-don't-know-you-city, that which I never anticipated, is, is, was the dynamic of high volume of activity and coming and going population, and people everywhere always, was the setting of an almost default adversarial dynamic against strangers, and colleagues and happenstance casual acquaintances, and that, that like more than other places. The hyperreality of the dynamics of personal interaction, something that where you could only do your time here and hope it somehow passes, or find other people with whom you are better suited for, if that's at all possible. There would be people who even look like if you knew them in your hometown, you would naturally be easy friends with them, but here, these masks of friendly faces don't like you at all, are antagonistic towards you, if only because they simply don't like how you look or just you, or maybe they have had prejudices set and reinforced by the precarious, over populated island which where they find themselves unstable now also. Backside 360's are like vaginas, they all look and come out differently. You fail as a woman, and you loose as a man.
Fine whatever, I really don't care and Chloë walks away back into her own version of Manhattan.
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