HOT EYES

I have been busy, and I don't really know what to talk about. I have not been interacting with my environment that well. I watched some tennis, I drank some beer and some whiskey. In my neighbourhood it is moving out / in day, and all the streets and back alleyways are filled with all kinds of rubbish, that people can't be bothered to take anywhere suitable, for example the tip. If there are bags lined up neatly outside a residence, tied up with string, it is a rarity. I'm sure there are salvageable items in these crap-hills, but really the thought of digging through dirty plastic and rotting clothes is not particularly inviting, especially in this heat. Piled up on the pavements, these heaps resemble the half-digested contents of some vapid twenty-one-year-old, vomited on to the street at the weekend and left to congeal whilst they 'sleep it off' behind their blackout curtains...

I wander through this landscape, struggling past its half-naked, vacuous inhabitants, to a friends' house-warming and we sit out in the front garden, projecting films onto a bedsheet draped over the tall hedge to act as a screen. Tumbled boxes fill most of the rooms, as the new occupants only arrived earlier in the day, and there are no glasses so I drink wine from a brand new, white Ikea mug, straight from the box. It stays warm until late. The people across the road light up a second-floor window with a strobe-light, and people further down the street play their music louder than us. Later an old lady asks us to quiet down and we comply, politely, and she thanks us in turn. 

I leave and walk back through the streets, where the unintelligible shouting continues, where the tinned snare and angry bass shakes the single-glazed window panes in their flaking, wooden frames. I want to leave this place. But I don't; I go home and watch a documentary about David Hockney on my laptop, and fall asleep.

But we have been busy, and I like that. 

I've been reading some short stories by Chekhov, which are filled with beautiful observations and things that I can read myriad things into.

At the weekend we had the closing installation for the Morphic Resonance show at PSL, and we had to give an 'artist's talk', something which fills me with a sense of foreboding and and unwillingness to comply. but once in mid-flow it was fine as usual. I don't like dwelling on things I have already done, and I want to move on with the next thing, and I also question whether or not anyone is actually interested in what I have to say about something I did. Maybe people are, and it is probably a naive and romantic notion to still believe that the output should speak for itself, but I want this to be true.

I am so hot and tired. It is 10 minutes until blog deadline. My fingers are blistered, this place is getting to me.