One of the most striking things you'll notice when driving through New Mexico, is that its small towns -the sort of negligible ones sprinkled between the more known towns and cities- are all in really bad shape. Decrepit conditions, lack of services, and quite a bit of abandoned property. Small Colorado towns on the other hand, even the ones that are comprised of a single avenue and a couple of cross streets, well they're still "nice". There's always a great coffee shop or two, a creamery, a fresh juice spot, and other fellow travelers strutting about. Still, the crown jewel of our road trip was New Mexico's Santa Fe.
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Such a picturesque place with its single style adobe architecture dominating the landscape, limiting the entire city's palette to the dirt color of ground and walls, and the deep green of trees and bush contrasted against the mostly solid blue of a zero-cloud sky. The cuisine in Santa Fe is scrumptious, the local coffee fantastic, and the art galleries are in great abundance. Most tend to deal in kitsch, the kind of art you'd expect to see in a Santa Fe gallery, but there are few gems in town showing some pretty powerful stuff. But "boundary-pushing" or not, Santa Fe strikes me as a wonderful place to be an artist.
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Have been in Houston for exactly two weeks now, where I am now a resident. First week was spent reassembling furniture and unpacking boxes. Not all boxes though, because I know it won't be long before we have to move again (our current rental is a month-to-month deal), so I really didn't want to unpack everything just to pack it all up again having already just packed it up to begin with. So only immediate "essentials" were unpacked, and that suits me just fine as the lack of things in my immediate surroundings means a lack of distractions (visually, mentally, spiritually), and I'm finding it easier to focus on the necessary.
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The office is all set up with only a single new addition: a drafting table because (after drawing over 210 pages of comix which constitute only about 50% of a graphic novel) its about freakin' time. This space of course isn't appropriate for working on paintings or other mixed media art-projects, nothing too large or too messy. It's strictly for writing, making comix, and working on design projects. I'ma have to get me a dedicated painting space later down the line, which I'm hoping shouldn't be too hard to score in Houston what with its lack of zoning laws. No zoning means its absolutely common to come across say, a warehouse or industrial facility a handful of blocks away from your perfectly residential street. Something I'm sure not a whole lotta people appreciate, but for us renegade artist types who prefer to only get around on foot and bicycle? Well that suits us just fine
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The minute we arrived in Houston, I made a major dietary change: I cut out carbs. Or at least, my diet is now extremely low carb. The three main casualties are rice, bread, and pasta. Four days in, I was ready to murder every living thing in existence. Second week in, I feel absolutely great and find that I really don't miss carbs at all, which is a fascinating development given that I've always been the type of person who would get cranky without his morning caffeine + carb fix.
It's a 6 minute bike ride to my fitness center of choice, a great family-run spot, where I've been getting a 30-minute exercise in on a not-quite-daily schedule. By the end of the month though, I'm hoping to have the strict daily routine down.
The 200+ emails sitting idly in my inbox have been addressed, some administrative stuff taken care of (with just a few loose threads left), and a decluttered enough slate is now ready to accommodate a return to a healthy work circuit. THE SOLAR GRID, TIMES NEW HUMAN, and this here newsletter are to be allotted a regular work schedule, with just one week out of the month considered for the other things that tend to come up because I now know that other things will always come up. Let's see how this new system works out.
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I've been reading POPISM: THE WARHOL '60S by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett which is a fantastic account of a very exhilarating time in a totally exciting place with an absolutely peculiar figure at the center of it. Warhol isn't strictly talking about himself here, it's a lot of observations about New York City (and sometimes elsewhere) and the people he met and hung out with along the way.
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"I'd lived in that part of town [the Lower East Side] when I first got to New York on Avenue A and St. Mark's Place. Even just a little bit of work a month could pay your rent down there. Right up till the summer of '67, before drugs came in, the East Village was, in a way, a very peaceful place, full of European immigrants, artists, jazzy blacks, Puerto Ricans--everybody all hanging around doorstoops and out the windows. The creative people there weren't hustling work, they weren't 'upwardly mobile,' they were happy just to drift around the streets looking at everything, enjoying everything."
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And this bit on The Stones:
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"In June of '64 the Rolling Stones had come over to play some American cities and the tour was a big disappointment to them... They had a big hit with 'Tell Me,' and they did have a following, but they were no supergroup yet in the United States--all anybody cared about was the Beatles."
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Which, y'know, says something about American culture at large at the time. I'm not entirely sure Americans were ready for anything nearly as "edgy" as The Rolling Stones in 1964. The Beatles on the other hand were safe. They were cute, easily marketable, and sang about wanting to hold girls' hands. These weren't the countercultural anti-war pro-LSD Beatles of 1967. They were the the "I'm happy just to dance with you" Beatles.
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"The Rolling Stones weren't the only ones with foreign publicity problems. I realized I had some myself when I had a major show at a gallery in Canada and I didn't sell one thing."
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Enjoying this real immensely. Full review upon completion.
That's all for this week. I hope you're into this new format for the newsletter I'm testing out, limiting the thing to 3-4 "points". Even if each point constitutes multiple paragraphs, I think this new format might—maybe possibly—make it easier for me to make this newsletter weekly again. 🤞
Houston feels relatively deserted right now, because a lot of people are taking the summer off to enjoy themselves out in Galveston or Miami or some beach in Mexico. I hope you're doing the same, and not being coerced into obsessing over being "upwardly mobile", always forever. You deserve a little break. We all do.
Not me though because I just moved and I'm behind on e v e r y t h i n g.
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Ganzeer
July 14, 2019
Houston, TX
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