Kindling, Art and Proclamation

Another holiday weekend comes to a close.

Gather round...

I went to an outdoor house-party (a yard party?) last night and sat in front of a campfire for the first time in years. I forgot how amazing charred wood smells the morning after it's snuck its scent through jackets, scarves, hair. Today has been nearly Proustian for it.

Interesting people love flickering light, it seems. The flames were circled by artists (and/or self-proclaimed artists; you never really know). A woman pulled out snapshots of her work - Warhol-esque renderings of females bent over in various disreputable positions, each painted on transparent material in lurid shades of latex-esque paint. Is there always an element of factory in fantasy?

Another man, a comic book publisher and artist, asked me point-blank, "Why did God bring you to me?" Now this, I don't know. I don't even know if he (or He, I suppose) felt I was acting as a scourge or a savant. I do know, though, that the man was good company. We spent a string of minutes discussing why art is so conflated with commerce in a city of unspeakable rents - and he countered that commerce is the most acceptable and understandable way to validate art. The spectrum of value flattens to the thin line of finance.

The thing is, he knew art's quantifiables go far beyond money. But rent doesn't. And if you want to live in New York, and you want to be an artist, then you'll want to be an other-proclaimed artist instead of a self-proclaimed one. You have to convert your commodity into the currency most useful to you.

Ah, yes.

So what is most useful to you?

What is most useful to me?

Warholian sexcapade art, of course. And actually paying my rent.