1st Ave-St. Marks - minutes after Obama was projected winner

So, as I’m sure everyone in the world knows, Barack Obama will be our next president – yeah!!! 

As over 130 million people did on Tuesday, I went and voted here in NYC.  I found it odd and rather funny that besides the presidential candidates, I don’t think there were any other people on the ballots except for Democrats.  Like, no one ran against the Democrats in my district because it’s so staunchly liberal.  Yeah!….

The evening started over my friend and neighbor’s Chesley’s (who conveniently lives across the hall) – about 10 people got together to snack, chat and listen to the returns.  (Chesley doesn’t own a television.)  I, on the other hand, left mine on and popped back every so often to see the results (TV seemed to be a bit quicker than the Internet, mainly because we kept forgetting to refresh the screen….).  I got rather obsessed with the large iPhone wall that CNN had.  And what’s up with the hologram interviews – I forget what station that was on – but are we all turning into Star Trek?

But how exciting were the results?  Obama just kept racking up the electoral votes.  We went out around 10 – 10:30 to the Tile Bar – a bar right at 7th Street and 1st Avenue (like outside our door…).  Unfortunately, the TV there was really small, but it seemed like the second the polls closed on the west coast, the stations projected Obama as the winner. 

Deena, Diane, Chesley and Dan banging pots in celebration (and true East Village style!)

All of a sudden, all around outside, all we could hear was cheering.  Cheering, screaming and applauding was coming from windows, rooftops, opened windows in cars.  The entire East Village erupted in screams.  As we looked over at 7th street, we saw one lone man walking proudly down the street, banging on a pot.  I’d never heard of this until I moved to New York, but on New Year’s people tend to bang pots and pans out their window.  But, tonight, it was all about Obama. 

We ran back to our apartments and grabbed pots, pans and things to bang.  By the time we got back outside, we noticed a crowd amassing at St. Marks and 1st Avenue, so we went over and joined in the celebrations.  Okay – one sidenote – the East Village is so changing – there were so many young Yuni’s (young urban narcissists) there, not the old time, edgy East Villagers I moved here to hang out with.  Oh, well, a sign of the changing times I guess….

And even the Yuni’s couldn’t bother me Tuesday night.  People were literally dancing in the street.  Others joined us with pots and pans.  A woman blared her trumpet.  As cars would come up First Avenue (they’re staggered because of the lights), the entire crowd would erupt with screams and cheers as the cars came by.  Cab drivers were honking their horns and throwing their fists in the air, more excited than I’d ever seen them.

At one point, a First Ave bus went by.  There were several people on it.  It had to go slowly by us because the crowd had grown really large by that point and was starting to spill out onto First Avenue.  People out on the street were cheering and waving to everyone on the bus.  This one older African-American woman stood up and looked so proud as she waved to all of us – and the entire street just erupted with joy.  It brought tears to my eyes. 

Election night St. Marks and 1st Avenue, NYC

This went on for hours.  We all laughed when a Playgirl.com van stopped in the crowd, and a bunch of Playgirl guys got out and started dancing on the top of the van – it was soooo New York.  I mean, how else to bring in a whole new era of not just life but of consciousness than to share it with gigolos dancing on the roof of their playgirl van?….

A group of us took our makeshift instruments, with Chesley in the lead on Gazoo, and marched around the block from 1st/7th to 7th/Ave A down to 6th Street and back around – people were coming out of bars cheering wildly when we went by.

I’ve lived in New York City going over 18 years now, and, I have to say, I have never in my life seen anything even close to this.  When have you ever seen anyone out in the streets in the US cheering and celebrating a presidential election?  This really is the beginning of something new.  And I’m not really bothered how much Obama can get done or not get done – he has brought hope back to millions.  He has given people a new faith in this country.  On my Facebook account, for the first time, I saw people writing that they were actually proud to be an American.  I actually think this is the first time I’m actually proud to be an American myself.  There’s hope and possibility for our future now – so no matter what Obama can actually accomplish, I hope that spirit of hope and possibility stays with us.  It really feels like the beginning of a new era – and I’m so honored to have been able to be part of it.

Here’s to all of us – worldwide.  May we all find solutions to our problems and ways to find peace, both inside and out!  I’m just so excited! – Obama rocks!!!  YEAH!!!!!

To back up a bit – I mentioned a couple blog posts ago that I attended the Creative Capital artist retreat in the Berkshires a couple weekends ago.  It was an amazing time and I met the greatest group of people – among them was Cory Arcangel, who a couple people there told me is an extremely popular, sought after artist.  He’s a lovely person who focuses on digital media, including Internet and videogame hacks, digital art and video, and he’s currently working on a project called D.I.Y.W.I.K.I. – an opensource website that details what he does.

Anyway, I just befriended Cory on Facebook, and saw that he’d posted up an invite to an event he was having tonight at Light Industry, an artist space in Brooklyn – a part of Brooklyn I’d never been to.  Just to give you a little background on me and Brooklyn – I’ve lived in NYC for 18 years (meaning Manhattan) and only just started going to Brooklyn in the past six months.  I would joke that I needed my passport to cross the river.  (Some day I’ll tell you how I got my Brooklyn phobia – it involves the band Pavement and their UK label, 4 in the morning, and not being able to jump on poles in the East River to get to a boat.  Oh, yeah, and 3 foot rats….)   Brooklyn also has a reputation for being uber trendy, etc etc, so it’s something I’ve sort of avoided (like, no one in Manhattan tries to be trendy…).

But! – Cory was doing a live performance on a Glockenspiel to Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run album.  Being a huge Springsteen fan, having seen him live loads of times, and also having just met Cory and thinking he was good people, how could I pass this up?  So I convinced my colleague at Sustainable Table, Dawn, to cross the waters with me (okay, she lives there so getting there was no big deal to her), but I convinced her that seeing a glockenspiel performance to Bruce Springsteen music really was what was called for two days before her 40th birthday.  (Happy Birthday, Dawn!)

So Dawn and I trudged out to Brooklyn, arriving late to a sold out show (which wasn’t stopping anyone from entering), so we walked into the Light Industry space and joined the sold out Brooklyn 20-something crowd in the hot sweat-pouring-off-the-walls room.   First thing I noticed – I was the oldest person there!!!  Second thing I noticed – I seemed to be the only one who actually knew Springsteen’s Born to Run album!

But, first, the show.  It was amazing – I actually don’t know the right adjectives for it.  Cory showed videos of Springsteen live from his really early years (the amazing Springsteen era!) – they were projected behind him while he stood in front of the 100+ capacity audience with his glockenspiel (xylophone like thing).  Now, the Springsteen videos were amazing enough to watch (for my generation at least), but Cory would play his glockenspiel to various songs.  “She’s the One” was his best performance – Cory really seemed to get into trying to play his instrument along to an amazing Springsteen songs, one of those ones that are really impossible to not move to – and he did it to a packed room of Brooklyn trendy zombies who were stone faced, serious and not moving a muscle!  Oh, it was unbelievable!  I actually think most of the people in the room had never heard a Springsteen song before, let alone seen a video of him, so I’m sure they were nonplussed by the music that was playing – they were solely focused on Cory and his performance.

This is what made it so surreal for me.  Springsteen is called the Boss for a reason – he’s an absolutely amazing performer.  If you’ve never seen him live, I seriously suggest you do while he’s still touring – to see his older stuff, music from Greetings from Asbury Park, Born to Run, and especially Darkness on the Edge of Town – is to see rock and roll at its absolute best!  I think that type of rock and roll will die with the likes of Springsteen and his peers, and I think everyone should try to experience it at least once in their life.  (And if you think Springsteen might not have it anymore, I saw him on Long Island several months ago and my entire section nearly self combusted with passion and unbelievable energy that came from the stage.  So when you go to a Springsteen show, you go to a rock and roll revival that takes you to another universe.  It can’t be put into words – it can only be experienced.

So, here I am, in Brooklyn at a trendy art show, glockenspiel and all, watching amazing Springsteen videos from the entire Born to Run album, and I look around, and the entire audience is just sitting there.  They obviously weren’t there for Springsteen – like I said, I think this is the first time most of them had ever seen/heard of him – there were there to see an artist play a xylophone every now and then to his music.  To take this raw passion and energy, this lifeforce that literally changed my life in 1980 when I first saw him – I’m not joking.  I saw Springsteen the night after John Lennon was murdered in 1980 – when he performed Jungleland, I had nothing short of a religious experience.  I connected with the 20,000 other people in that stadium – we were all pumping our arms in the air during the musical interlude – all of us together, in unison, crying for the loss of John Lennon – and we were all united in love.  That might sound hokey to some people, but it was in the top 3 most amazing experiences of my life.  (I have to admit, seeing The Dalai Lama the first time tops the list hands down…). 

But I’m used to total energy, chaos, screaming and passion when there’s anything to do with Springsteen.  And here I am in Brooklyn with a bunch of trendy Brooklyn youngsters listening to great Springsteen music and watching a young artist (who did a great job, mind you!) playing his glockenspiel while no one in the room is moving – no one is bobbing their head or tapping their foot to the music.  They are sitting there literally like it’s a funeral, and my brain just couldn’t take it.  I mean, my circuits blew!  It was so out of my ordinary reality that I wasn’t able to make sense of any of it.

And I think if you ask some people, they might say that’s great art.  Something that takes you out of your self, your ordinary reality, something that challenges you and makes you not think – that might be what art is all about.  I wonder what kind of experience the others had, the ones who know nothing about Springsteen, who don’t know that he just played at Giants Stadium in New Jersey – I wonder what their reaction to this all was.  To me, art is so subjective, and I think good art challenges you to not think but to experience.  It’s when I lose the ability to conceptualize that I feel connected to other things – and Cory’s performance, on some surreal level, took me out of my ordinary reality and has me still grasping for what it was all about.  And perhaps that was the point.

Perhaps I’ll now go out and buy something like a glockenspiel and play it to Jackson Pollock’s paintings.  Or a harp – I think Pollock’s work would go well with a harp.  Now that would be a trip, wouldn’t it?….

I’m rather honored to have been brought in as a consultant.  I was a bit unsure as to why I’d been invited, but I’m doing consultations with some of the artists right now, and it seems that I’m not the only one who looks at art as a way to educate people about social causes.  There are also people out there who are working on art installations and projects that deal with food, green space, and all things sustainable.

One artist in particular is Matthew Moore - he’s a farmer, both organic and conventional, from Phoenix, Arizona, and is an artist.  And his art revolves around farming.  I just spoke with him about a project he’s putting together where he’s going to film food growing and show it along with audio tracks.  (That’s a very simplified version of what he’s planning to do.)  He’s been funded by Creative Capital – and I’m so excited by what he’s planning to do that I’m planning to plug his work and follow it as he develops the project.

Every artist here – some past grantees but most current grantees – gave a presentation on their work, so we spent two days watching everyone talk about their passion and what they’re doing.  And I have to say, I am so inspired right now.  Even though I’m here because of my marketing background at Sustainable Table, I’m so psyched now to get my book published and to start writing the next one. 

It became obvious to me that I have to make time to be around creativity more – and not just going to a museum but also to be around other artists.  Oh, I met a curator from MoMA here (Museum of Modern Art), and I told him about my Jackson Pollock love and how I like to go up on Sunday afternoons and sit in front of Pollock’s painting – he said I should pitch a story to the New Yorker about Sundays with Pollock.  We’ll see.  I definitely haven’t been there enough to write something now, but we’ll see. 

I have a couple consultations next, then we have a final barbecue tonight, and then it’s back to NYC.  This has been an intense weekend – the hours were insane – but worth every second.  I can only hope I get invited back again next time they have a retreat – and I hope I can stay in touch with a bunch of people from here!

We found No. 1 in the Museum of Contemporary Art here. It’s angry and frustrated – has a different vibe that No. 31 in MoMA. Weird thing about the museum here is that there aren’t any benches to sit on, and they have this painting in a kind of entryway so it’s not conducive for sitting or standing in front of for long.

But JP is JP – and it was great to be able to see five of them in one day! I’ll try to post up photos soon!

Am off to LA in a couple minutes – I found not one, but THREE JP’s in LA. Am hoping to see them all!!! Will take photos!

So there will be Pollock action shortly!

Today I thought I’d get an audio phone to learn something about Jackson (I think I’ll start calling him JP). I found it funny that when they handed me the instruction guide, the sample painging in is was No. 402, the Pollock I’ve been looking at. (I might be rather naive, but I actually had no idea JP was so famous – shows you how much I know about art….)

The painting is called One: Number 31, 1950. It’s an oil enamel on unprimed canvas. The audio starts off with a quote from Pollock int he mid-1940s, “My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas on the wall or floor. On the floor, I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting since I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives, and dripping fluid paint. When I’m in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It’s only when I lost contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise, there is pure harmony, an easy give and take.” – the artist Jackson Pollock in the mid-1940s.

This is one of Pollock’s large paintings – maybe 12′ x 20′?? I think to view it properly, you have to start from across the room, where you can feel the whole piece. And that’s what’s so cool about JP – you don’t just look at his paintings, you feel them. You should then walk closer to the part of it you’re drawn to, as close as you’re drawn, and then stop when you know you’re inside it. And then let go. Stop thinking, stop analyzing – just let go and let it wash all over you. Just be it.

When you get there, it’s like you can feel JP in the paint – his energy still flows from the canvas. Now that’s art.

This is No. 31 – I think he did 31 of them (or 30) – I’ll have to find out exactly. Maybe I’ll make it my goal to try to view all of them around the world, to see if together they tell a story or to see if you can feel different things in them.

I can already tell sitting here that there are people who get JP and people who don’t. A man just walked in the room with his family, 3 children and wife, and was visibly excited and said to his children, “This is Jackson Pollock. He is THE most important painter.” I love JP, but I didn’t realize there are people who consider him the best artist ever.

I was speaking with someone about coming to MoMA and sitting here in front of JP, and he said other people have mentioned or have done the same thing – that JP calms them down or that they just like sitting in front of it. I wonder what we all have that connects us like this?

And you can tell when someone really feels it. They’ll stand in front of the painting, usually directly in the middle, and just witness it. They stand still as a statue, like they’re in meditation, which they probably are.

What I found today is that when I first look at the painting, it seems really beige because the canvas is that color. But if I stare at it as if meditating on it, it turns black – all the black pops out and takes over the canvas, and it turns into a completely different painting. And one time it went all white – the white parts popped out and took over the piece. It’s really cool to experience.

Another thing I noticed this week is that the people who came through the room here mimicked the painting – it’s all a dance of chaotic yet symmetrical patterns of people making their way through the room. At one point it was like a ballet – people were coming in, turning, gliding, moving, even spinning – and there was a line in the painting doing the exact same thing. When they stopped, there was a splodge there to represent that also. At one point, the dance was perfect – everyone coming through the room was a perfect line of paint in the piece, and they were all moving in this perfect unison with each other – old people, college students, tourists, babies in strollers – all dancing together perfectly with each other and up in the painting. It was like the painting literally came to life. It was beyond surreal.

I’m off to India for a couple weeks, then Switzerland, then Sedona for a month, then Tennessee and Colorado, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back and see JP! Wish I could have stayed here longer today also – but it’s 4:20 and I’ve got packing, errands, and dinner plans. So, I guess it’s back to my other reality….

(This was written while sitting in my spot at MoMA, with a couple small edits when I typed it up. I couldn’t post it up here until early May when I got to Sedona – life’s been crazy busy – but all so good!)

Okay, I think it’s decided. I’m going to see if I can find where the 30 JP’s are and visit them over the coming years. And I’ll get photos of them all (to make it a little touristy….)

Hey – that was my idea!

I’ll let you know if there’s any increase in traffic this week…. I’m hoping some nuns show up.

I then thought, hey, I could even start up a Pollock blog – all about sitting in front of the painting. Could invite friends to visit, could even put up posts live while sitting there.

It then dawned on me that the Museum of Modern Art also has some Pollocks, so I checked them out yesterday and discovered there was actually a Pollock room. I heard the security guard in there tell someone that there were around $100 million dollars worth of Pollock in the room (and there were only about 10 paintings). (It’s a small room.) That in itself is worth sitting in – just to grasp the value of what was surrounding me.

So it’s come down to MoMA or the Met – which is the better Pollock viewing place? Up until minute 44, I was thinking the Met, but then 7 priests bounded into the Pollock room at MoMA….

What? I hear you asking. I’m sitting on the bench, staring at the large Pollock painting in the room, when I see a Catholic priest, white collar, black outfit and all, bound up to the painting next to the one I was looking at. He exclaims across the room (and behind my view), “This is it!”

And six more priests come bounding up, full of passion and excitement. They were all mesmerized by Pollock’s Full Fathom Five painting (which, I must say, is pretty fantastic). The main priest explained the painting to the other six – snippets I heard were something to the effect of, “He used nails, strings, tacks and other objects, but they’ve lost their function.” He spoke about the confusion and anger and pain in the painting and how Pollock was working through his subconscious feelings through his art.

The priest said to the others that their job is to take the confusion and to put it (the person) back together.

All seven priests studied the painting intently, took what the main priest was saying to heart, and looked like they had really connected with the piece of art.

Watching them was art itself.

The funniest part was watching other people in the room react to 7 priests around a Pollock. Some literally jumped back in shock; the woman sitting next to me took out her cellphone and took a photo (I would have also if I only had a camera on my cellphone!). But there were a lot of surprised stares at the Priestly Seven.

This is one of the reasons why I love living in New York City. Where else would you see Seven Priests and a Pollock?

I’ve put in a couple photos of what I made in 8 weeks – with never having done pottery like this before!

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