English Kills (1997) from the bobtail bridge over the canal, where turds float on the existing pollutants
“Narratives.” when i hear that it’s time to run for the hills. Thankfully, i never have to hear it, or smell it, except for the cable shows, particularly what they sell as the news, and when you get out of the milieu you live and work in, for instance the world of art and entertainment, it hits you like a brick, a stupid brick. As bad as “empowerment” from the late 90s. I’m presuming the growth and popularity of the buzzword, “narrative” is the unusual rise in nonsense, misinformation and narcissistic babble of Trumpism, which produced and spawned so many stories, that had nothing to do with what is, but, what it is that i want. It’s as though, with all these educated tech-oriented people, they gotta get all highfalutin, to describe, what should be simple factual events, as either part of, or just simply a “narrative” that then is ready to set on reality to make it pliable, applicable and plastic, in order to better facilitate the manipulation of unfiltered actualities for the benefit of the story-teller.
And the “false narrative” buzzword, what a joke. Talk about an oxymoronic make-no-sense buzzword. It’s like saying your a fake phoney.
Below a certain level of wages and education, word buzz-cycles are unnecessary, so you can take your empowerment narrative, pivot, and be a game-changer, by leaning in, not only to be the best version of yourself, truly engaged, scaled in a fully sustainable new normal whose optics is simply awesome, and place it back in your narcissistic bowels using the the orifice with no tongue, that only excretes, and does not produce, let alone making anything akin to truth or fact, and learn to deposit that shit in its proper receptacle.
A television set is exposed at low tide in English Kills, a canal between Williamsburg and Bushwick in Brooklyn.
The last time i heard it was in 2013, when i stupidly consented to a show at the Gumpy Warhall gallery in trending Ridgewood, Queens. Gump Master is making his picks of my works which he is going to juxtapose with another photographer. We share nothing in common, both the gallery owner and the person i was juxtaposed with. I specifically had told him i would never do anything but a solo show, but being narcissistic on the Trump level, he had an idiotic notion that putting together disparate people, is somehow like jazz, or music, and would create, some sort of cinematic haiku, and further his own career, which was the objective all along. I dropped that whole music meataphor back in the 1980s with Dirty Old Town, because, when done right, comparisons, metapors or links are not needed.
He bowed his head, voice deepening, not looking at me, but at my work, and said, “I see a narrative.” Which, in his highly subjective parlance meant there was a thread, barely visible, without the aide of a microscope, craft beer and weed, that linked myself with whom he had picked to have this two-person show, with absolutely no connection between the two photographers, except we both have two eyes, two legs, etc., and we shot reality with color film, which was, also, on the level of saying, that me and the well-known photographer were part of a larger narrative because we share the fact that we were photographers. It was the biggest flop of a show he had put on at a fairly successful Queens gallery. I wonder why? It was not just that he was a painter and knew nothing of photography, but that after Donald Trump, he would be my number one pick for the man with the biggest narcissistic malignancy.
RealStill is unkown, anonymous, nameless, and, thus, there is nothing to compare it to and no knowledge about it exists, and the “professional” artists that show up, befuddled, perhaps, by someone who doesn’t like artists, but is one, or, cultivates a no-name strategy, RealStill doesn’t want a name, fame and all that. I find “professional” artists, master gossipers and essentially, transactional, and it’s a distraction only because this work if the flip of that.
Whether film or digital, images cannot deliver the smell. But, it is what it is, excrement, on the paint-flecked pavement of an abandoned shop, at the largest public shithole in the Junkyards in Queens. In a section of the city with dozens of auto shops and junkyards, not one has a toilet for workers. I guess making me the Serrano of the lower classes. Just kidding, no one shoots shit better, than Mr. Serrano.
And no one markets it better than that world of art – Maurizio Cattelan, Piero Manzoni, Chris Ofili, there are more, but sometimes these men use their poo and others for their narratives, some of which are about art and its market.
Honestly, this work is anti-gentrification th18e same way Walker Evans’ work was anti-celebrity, and, also, my last four books have been outright and directly anti-gentrification in the strictest terms, and, then, i learned that this Gumpy-ass, a founder, of what i had always considered as symbolic, the venue that had the biggest impact on the gentrification of Williamsburg, and the wiping out of its most interesting block – North Sixth Street between Bedford and Berry. The clubby gentry, and the arty who party hardy, found their place in Williamsburg – boomers schmoozing, more getting high than art was done there, as proven in the unity of art and entertainment achieved by the boomer artists.
If that ain’t bad enough, i walked into his gallery/home once, sat down, and the first thing he. says, without any prompting is, “I’m more ant-gentrification, than you.” Not realizing i was on a game show as a contestant competing for a prize, all i could do is shoot back immediately, “That’s not true.” It’s liie saying, White supremacist saying that he loves Jews.mWhat a gargantuan understatement, whatta weird asshole, or, to be scientific and observational, whatta weak, insecure, jealous gossiper, to be that disconnected and lacking in personal intuition, that he can’t sense, i represent everything that is the antipode to this arty-ass gentrification, even when i tell him so. Narcissim produces a kind of deafness. Do i care if this one spearheaded, unintentionally, the gentrification of my home and the loss of my artistic subjects? I could give a shit, however, integrity is my top dog. I’m into honesty, like that of working folks, as opposed to professional artists.
By the way the creepy gentleman i speak of? I’ve known him longer than anyone in NYC, with the exception of his wife. So i know what i’m talking about.
If that ain’t bad enough, there aren’t many things i like about photography except it’s suited for the episodic, random, planned, singular and simultaneous when used to capture the world through time and place alone. Narrative? I do pictures because it’s non-narrative, and captures episodic things. Take for instance landscapes, that are, by nature, open and empty, and invite the viewer’s mind into an empty vessel, and the replica. But, most importantly, shots are hits from what’s real, as things, not stories. Strung together in books and there’s still no story in my books.
Since then i haven’t been subject to the word that has become the go-to substitution, for, i’m about to hear someone’s bull shit, because 2013 was the last time i had brief contact with the exoplanet of Art & Entertainment, and, now, only have to hear it on cable television.
“I see a narrative.” Yeah, and “I see dead people.” That’s not a story, but the relentless documentation of that which will be gone, often being the only representation made of what once was. No one uses the language of buzzwords below a certain level of education and class, although, after 40 years, words like misoginyst and significant other finally was spread out by media on radio and television, after originating in France with Marxist deconstructionist structuralism, came here to find a home in academia, and now the FedEx driver is talking about experiencing a misogonystic narrative. And, the Grand Asshole of all time, Steve Bannon cops Marxist French Struturalist lingo and flips it for his evil ends, “the deconstruction of the state” and all that.
“Narratives” go hand-in-hand with a thing’s domination, while shots of the world are just that.
Once upon a time, one afternoon a duck landed on a floating mound of garbage in English Kills in 1997. That’s it.
Did a duck land here to call attention to pollution, or, even, to be used as a metaphor for the stink and poison of purely transactional relationships masquerading as friendships, or prerending to have some purpose beyond careering? Then, may your concepts, ideas, thoughts and prejudices forever float like turds, both on the surface, and just below, constantly showing, metaphorically, who you are.I’m responsible for the metaphor.
The wildly original notion of “alternative facts” remains the best and most obvious dead giveaway during the Leader’s run, and, for what i’m saying here. Alternative facts equals lies. It’s an equation that cannot by altered, except by alternative math. “Alt-facts” – it says it all, what thirty per cent of the population have become, greatly aided by their existence in front of a screen, in a controlled environment, endowed with only their dubious power of the misinformed segmnet of the internet.
Oddly i’ve always held the belief that men, particularly older men, past 60 years old, who dye and coif their hair, are liars and bull shitters. This was a stereotype that used to be confined to folks like used car sales people, but is now associated with many professions. Through it all the dye-in-your-hair marker for liars, whether they be jolly or sinister, rings true. So buzzwords like the heavily overused “narrative” come across like toupees and bad dye jobs on the heads of older men.
In no order, according to the size of their narcissistic tumors, that, in fact, are of equal weight and volume, and are all malignant, here are four examples –
75k tax deduction per year for coifing and make-up. Remember he spoke of McCain and said he likes his heroes to see combat. I like my presidents to, at a minimum, wear less make up than Lady Gaga. He also bought his way out of Viet Nam War, with the price of a podiatrist visit, probably one that rented office space from his father, who died of dementia.
Proof? The most coiffed man of our time, who is also the world’s biggest liar and bullshitter, as well as, a maligant world-class narcissist, has a “platform” caled, Truth Social. Proof.
How unusual, those are the words i used to describe the situation i was trapped in when this one, above, calls in the worst years of my life, at a terrible moment in time – taking care of my dying Mother in hospice, as well as, the same situation with my Father, and, coincidentally, my best friend, nd is looking for me to help him.
I had sent him, as a gift, a selection of prints from my recently restored early industrial work in Chicago as the lead-in to a possible future conversation about context and my work, which no one has seen until it was brought on the internet in 2021. Sometimes people will send you a thank you note, but six months later while battling both illegal displacement from my lifetime home and the death of my parents and friends, he emails me with the subject head, “Great Pictures”. It was clear that i was about to be asked, once more, after forty years of this, for my unseen, yet to be published work.
I kept explaining my situation over a period of a month and kept putting him off. Finally on Labor Day weekend, on my birthday, when I was feeding my mother in hospice he calls us and says that he has this deadline and he needs to know about using my work. Kind of a confusing situation, would you agree? So, like i always do, to make the situation disappear I just gave up and said, yes. What a mistake it turns out that that was. It seriously seriously festered after 44 years of people publishing my work before i have the chance to do so, as the last straw, i must kill myself, i’m an old man and still being treated like an asshole.
Twelve years after that sad event, the “documentary buddha” (Ebert) is positioning himself, just like Gumpy Valentine did, as someone who is ant-gentrification? It is truly the Age of Embarrassment” (McKray). And, in a business based on names, i just named a few and they don’t need captions, everyone already knows who and what they are. Gordon Quin and Fred Valentin, who i met in Chicago, were last straws, and i was more done than ever.
To be clear, the assholes on the right, spitting out their unfounded baseless bull shit are just that, complete assholes, but on the left it’s, unfortunatley matched very often. In fact on an every day practial and personal level, the harm done by those on the left to my home, career and life has been direct, devastating and violent. They sugarcoat with that bizzarre mixture of “friendship” and business, while, colonizing (taking) my home, block and neighborhood.
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© Jesus
Big Mike, part of D. T.’s inner circle of the most cracked pots, in his case, literally, knows a “narrative” when he sees something he wants, like the reinstatement of the Leader, who has brought together a crack team of advisors, providing a variety of “narratives” and alt-facts, when needed to get what you want.
Dick Farrel who fancied himsefl “the other Rush Limbaugh”, was as extreme as it gets with all this Covid and vaccines conspiracies. He also. generally peddled bull shit for a living, as just another mouh, as a radio “personality.”
We will have to talk about these sorts of people in the past tense, of course, because they killed themselves with their own narratives, alternative facts, loads of hair dye and weird coiffing, by believing in their own bull shit, that’s commonly called having your head up your ass. They proved their own bull shit with their deaths.
Where does this smelly veneer originate? I cannot blame politics. Weinstein, Simmons, et al. They proved that the politically correct are assholes as well, and tremendous gentrifiers to boot. What they all share is unbridled ambition and ego, as one in the same, forming an endless narcissistic loop where dye, even when it’s dripping down your face, during the biggest political scam in the history of the country, should be a marker of that, but, of course cannot be seen or successfully interpreted by those members of society who have decided to live in their own rectal worlds.
Special mention must be given to some younger “narrative” kings and queens, like Kyrie Irving or Jessup Smollet, who are good examples, amongst millions, who cannot see their way out of their own births, into narcisissm, even when attached to some purpose or cause.
And here is, perhaps the biggest asshole in our time, along with the Donald. If you want to understand cancer, think Putin, the most immoral European leader since Hitler. Too bad there’s Trump, otherwise Putin would be the biggest asshole to lie and dye, but only what’s left of his hair, unlike his buddy and Russian citizen, Steven Segal, yetn another member of the lie and dye scet.
The latest loser to dye his hair is the glorious ex-mayor of NYC, another bull-shitter who even ran for president while mayor, even though he had absolutely no supprt, including New Yorkers.