breathless in ny

so, no, I can't keep up, but that is nice too.. have spent these last , what four weeks, preparing the critics's page for The Brooklyn Rail, november issue, during which I got to invite essays from various brilliant friends on the topic i chose, which was Translating Art... and off they (and I) went... my introductory essay I won't resume here, but I can say it is about communities, like the one we formed in writing these essays, like those who accepted, like what they chose... and I have to say the Brooklyn Rail feels like one largish community but who can gather... so to get to the meeting I was supposed to arrive during, to have my picture taken so that Phong Bui can do my portrait  for that issue, and I LOVED the grouping of people, all informal, everyone talking, everyone having pizza and wine after, ah, terrific, only very far for those of us dwelling in Manhattan -- I got on the wrong direction of the subway, and was rescued by Susan Bee, with whom and whose husband Charles Bernstein, I have been in friendly and happy close contact for years... and we ARRIVED at the BR, and , yes, I loved it all.

And yes, we went to St. Matthew Passion,  rehearsal at the armory, with Simon Rattle and Peter Sellars (he rushing up and down and getting the boy's chorus and the real chorus to go into the ailes, so we were all a part of it all -- such music, of course, the summit of music I never concentrated on before like that, and then a lots of other assemblies , less sublime, but they were all heightened by that Armory Experience... I gave a talk out in Woodstock on Georges Malkine, having talked the night before on Joseph Cornell at the New School, and then, I will just attach what I didn't want to add to my introductory essay to the Brooklyn Rail, too personal (it, after all, goes to 20,000 readers)
but I really loved being with Kathy Ruttenberg, so I'll add it here:

Back in the city this past Thursday, I had seen some large and surrealizing baroque sculptures of  the animalist  artist Kathy Ruttenberg,  in the Stux gallery on 57^th street, and then on Sunday, I had the ultimate joy of making a surrealist romp through her working place and inspiration: her woods, studio, and amazing rare varieties of rabbits, pigs, pigeons, and goats, near Woodstock. Some animals were interior: Trixie the pig, who agreeably grunted when we stirred her blanket, and who had her own corner with pig paintings and drawings all around, like  an altar: various gorgeous rabbits like Ozone, all fluffy white hair, and, I loved Ozone and one other rabbit of darker hair hue, and we played with chickens and rode in a pony cart with Mercury, not exactly fleet-footed, but adorable, and then returned to the city, animalized in a good sense. 

new projects

nothing fills you with more delight than new projects, right? So, having finished teaching this semester, before plunging into the fall, there is the joy of the summer spreading out, full of -- well, what summer is, if you are lucky, as I am, full of. My son Matthew is here from Cambridge, the one in the UK, and that is like major joy, and I am involved into 2 bio-art projects, one from more of a distance than the other, being on the surrealist painter Georges Malkine, whose daughter wrote it and I am just hovering around it, and the other on Jon Schueler, a superbly interesting American painter, second generation Ab-Ex, but then went to Scotland, its Highlands, as in Mallaig on the Sound of Sleat, and I am co-writing this with a Scot friend, which is being a good thing to do. What paintings! clouds and sea and storms, so I rented "i know where I'm going," a wonderful 1945 film with Wendy Heller about those islands, Mull and Eigg and the Isle of Skye, where my famiy is from originally....
and my essays on surrealism i hope to fix up this summer for publication, and we leave for our modest, old, rustic beyond belief cabanon in Provence on July 1...
Bryn Mawr, which I turn out to have loved a lot, and still now, wanted us to have room to walk around in our minds..- I so enjoyed seeing my former classmates, what a bunch of smart cookies!

when you get up

so when, every single night, I get up, have some rum and nuts from a can (the rum from a bottle of the cheapest rum available from the nearby store, Castillo by name of the rum, just fine for ruminating and then -- or hoping about then-- getting back to sleep, I open whatever is there, I am happy. Tonight it is Art Danto's What is Art? -- Art is gone, but I loved and followed and talked with him over the years he was around. FIRST, he was with Shirley, so we'd talk about Proust, I was going to say "of course, we talked about Proust," but really, how sniffy can you get? So, really,we talked about Proust. How not?

So I am reading Arthur Danto, and that puts me in a good mood, so I can go back to bed. Yesterday, I was concerned about paying FAR too much to have a jacket I mistakenly bought somewhere way downtown when I was exulting over something I heard or read, and it fit miserably so I got it put with shoulderpads, DREADFUL and I didn't take it back there, but to a lace that said it did custom work and oh was I miserable over going back in and protesting I would not pay an exoribtant sum and could they please JUST fix the shoulders but the woman didn't understand the English language, which, apart from French, which I love, is the only one I speak, and so I went back in today, and guess what? I love the way they have made this dreadful jacket into something that looke, well, like a jacket for me.

So I ate my hate or however you put that, paid the sum, and will wear my jacket today. Yes, today, after I hope I get back to sleep. Goodnight.

ps I really do see that my posts would have more readers if I said farewell to the city opera again, or something exciting-like, but you know what? whoever reads this is welcome, and that is the point.

pss and yes, I did write the chapter for the Cambridge History of Modernism about Painting and Sculpture, and turned it in, and will have to fix it, but glory be, I did done it. Last week. After Woodstock, where I went to work on a bio of Georges Malkinewith his daughter, Fern. Yes. Did that. Loved Woodstock. Will go again. In October. To celebrate "The Return of Georges Malkine," or that is the way I think of it. He left Paris for Woodstock. What? Yes. And then returned to Paris, where Aragon celebrated "The Return of Georges Malkine," and so we wil celebrate, again, here in Woodstock, this return. All very surrealist. 

Passwords and Being Open

Every time

What a nice way to start:  I must have written that at least a month ago, to say some angry thing about losing, finding, relosing passwords, then dashlane, one of those things

and now, months later, in freezing new york, about to go to chicago (more Modern Art Cookbook talks, always fun because you have absolutely no idea who might turn up and it is so deeply non-literary, and I loved the review in the TLS speaking of my grandmother, and will send the one that just came out in Artnews to Julian Merrow-Smith, since his beautiful rougets decorates the top of it) and I loved the idea of doing a Literary Foods book, but perhaps that is not where my heart lies

and someone suggested Surrealism in a Hurry, thanks to George McClintock, what fun that would be, and am enjoying a proposed biography of Georges Malkine (surrealist, friend of Desnos, of Artaud, and a greatly unusual painter and writer and film actor), can work on that in Paris, where I go next week to join in a jury on a brilliant and staggeringly long iimportant, I think, thesis on Max Ernst and how his war experience impacted his work

it is a good moment not being bogged down in one thing you know you have to rush on getting through, just a translation of a scientist poet I love, Lorand Gaspar, doing it for ContraMundum, such a great press, with Rainer Hanshe, for whom I  translated Gherasim Luca, and this will be with Nancy Kline, with whom I did a Rene Char

am doing another Pierre Reverdy, this time with Black Widow Books, who did the Char and a Tristan Tzara and a Robert Desnos, and an Eluard, in fact, just about everyone I ever wanted to translaate!
Thanks to Joe Phillips!

it all feels open and possible, which is probably why I left open that only begun thing at the top of this, called "every time"-- so many things are "every time" and they are never dull
Had breakfast with Matthew this morning, now that is never dull, and spoke with Hilary, who is about to run 5 kilometers in the snow in a rabbit costume at the end of which you get soup and hot chocolate -- she is perfectly suited to Northampton and it to her which is a compliment to both