Very

Squeeze. Erin V. Sotak is an installation and performance artist concerned with notions of absurdity, futility, consumption, labor, and aesthetics. Her work is best described as a moving tableau that is re-rendered through the photographic process. Sotak will fabricate a new space in the Sesnon gallery using a variety of materials including wood, wall coverings, raw silk, and pomegranates. The piece revisits ideas of constraint versus restraint, seen versus unseen, interior versus exterior, and the distinct blur of the separateness of experience that occurs in a singular shared moment.

Don't ask me why the TV is blaring in the background. Generally I hate TV. I mean I really hate it. It has a lot to do with having been a really bad cable television editor for two many years. It has a lot to do with having started my career as an editor for really bad cable television editor in broadcast news. It has to do with cringing every time I hear an audio-booth recorded voice over. Or see a Queer-Eye style animated show open. Or am manipulated to stay tuned for the next half hour by the much-repeated dangling carrot of a grand deus ex machina executed in a ten-second tease.

There. I just saw a commercial for Cotton. Cotton? Yea, cotton. Pussycat Dolls. Tyra Banks. It's been a while since I tuned in. Clare Danes and The Boyfriend Trouser™. Cheese-It Stix. I recognize none of the station bugs.

The mute button. The remote. My kingdom for the remote.

The week. In fragments. My week. Just like the TV. My friend who decided to don his Tibetan prayer beads, shortly before killing himself. The toxicology report. The Vicodin in his system. His wife. His wife. Who will never be the same. His kids. His precious kids. Who I love more than warm, straight-from-the-tap maple syrup on waffles. Nothing better than to hear them giggling. Nothing more reassuring. And thank god. There are still giggles. Thank god. Even when I don't believe.

And the leaves. How quickly they grow back on the trees. As if they were never gone. And we have forgotten what the bare tree is.

How quickly. We forget.

the difference between me and you

Jo Hanson, Mother Courage – "from work that I call urban spirit figures, using metals that are crushed by street traffic."

It has been my goal to come here and write at least once a week. And I have to admit, that I have been having a hard time doing even this. So tonight I pour myself a small glass of my favorite whiskey–yes, the kind that's sealed with wax–put on some inspirational tunes and confess that I am just not sure what to write about. A free write? A political diatribe? A nostalgic walk down memory lane? What will it be?

I wonder. As for the music, I am listening to David Byrne's playlist. Too lazy and too–um, what is the word, non-committal? yes, we'll take that–I am allowing someone else to do the work for me. But listen to this. I always like the thoughtfulness with which he crafts his themes. Tonight it's: Pop as in popular. That's where this playlist falls apart. Not all of these songs reached or will reach a wide enough audience to be considered truly popular, but it wasn't for want of being poppy, catchy or sticking to your brain pan. David Byrne. I don't care much for his fine art. And he has this really earnest blog that's like, do I really need to know all about David Byrne's tarmac adventures in trying to get back to Newark, NJ from Austin, TX? But, you all know how I feel about My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. And those Brazil Classic compilations he put out in the early 90's, I mean, we played the shit out of those albums! And they were, albums, that is, back then. But listen to this. Right now. How perfectly did Gnarls Barkley's Crazy ooze right into The Arcade Fire's My Body Is A Cage? The man knows his pop music. So why should I reinvent the wheel here?

Hunh. And now I s'pose I should write about something. Now would be the time, right? I mean, I have your attention and all. So. Do I write about helping my recently widowed friend sort through her husband's belongings and determine which items to save for the kids and which items get donated to Good Will? Do I write about the lengthening days and how encouraging Spring can be? How it always seems to come right when you need it most? Do I write about my nasty cough that has kept me and my neighbors up for the last week and how sore and tired I am from coughing? Do I write about the argument I got in to earlier today about whether or not one should aggressively confront another aggressive person, namely one who drives like a maniac, endangers other people's lives and then acts like it is his right as an American citizen to do so. Do I write about the woman's obituary I read that moved me so, a woman who died at 89 years old, but lived that life as an artist, an activist, who could teach us a thing or too if we bothered to listen, a woman who made her point out of trash, compiled an archive of city litter that showed us who we were and a time line of how we got here?

Where do I begin? And where should I stop? Where do I look to for guidance?

When was the last time you prayed?

This morning I rode my bike to work. It took 45 minutes, and it was lovely. A lovely day. A lovely introduction to spring. A lovely feeling of accomplishment for riding my bike to work, for starting the week riding my bike to work. Course, that could all change tomorrow, but for now, things feel possible and, hell, downright rosy.

It wasn't until the ride back, though, that I really started to see. You know, the kind of seeing that only comes from practice, from a strict discipline of noticing the things around you, of seeing the new, of looking beyond the usual. I had forgotten. I had forgotten what that was like. But my field of vision opened and I was gifted the following. A brick factory boarded and empty, remnants of its industry being taken over by the earth. The sycamores that line the wide streets of this island, the tiniest green leaves shaking in the sun. A shiny black police car, reflecting the brightest, harshest light. The produce district where warehouses brimming with crates and crates are loaded, unloaded, and forklifts move in slow-motion.

Riding over the drawbridge I could see the water beneath the metal slates. There were crevices and cracks over which I rode, there were signs and lights that were disobeyed, there were helmets laid by the wayside, and there were motorists to curse. There were legs to get tired, an ass to get sore, and a face to get sun-kissed. There was grit in my teeth, there was wind between my legs and there was a certain music–traffic, down strokes, the last song in my head–I couldn't ignore.