"submissive artist."

I'm feeling loquacious right now, so I'll write to take advantage of it. This reminds me of how I told someone earlier that I'm a "submissive" artist. Meaning I like to provoke the art to make itself. For example, the memoir I wrote about my father's days as a beekeeper. I interviewed him by phone about thirty times, but all I was doing was writing down what he would say. I edited everything to seem like one coherent story about his early adulthood with a parallel to the bees themselves. And I also sought out to fill every detail with a better description. So basically, I was a really thorough machine that my father fed his memories into, and then I spat it out as something new.

Another example is my love for found things. Found texts (the news, dear abby columns, google searches), found objects (letters, toys, photos, etc), found sounds. If it's a readymade, then all I have to do is drop the frame around it and it's art. Happenings are another. The audience can be made into a participant, and then I'm not stuck being the only one creating the artwork. I don't need that kind of responsibility; provoking is enough. And text scores are pretty neat. Composers were always kinda passive, just writing out the music and making someone else do the playing. But with text scores, you could write anything, and the performer is left to interpret it however they want. This I love the idea of. And also, any kind of art in the medium of a party/picnic/expedition/seance/group gathering.

I do call myself an "artist," because it turns my interests/projects/experiments into what could pass as a career. For me, career isn't about money, only enlightenment and socialising and lifestyle. Right now I'm so energetic about making work, but so dead about what to make. It's the sudden reverse of how I felt a month ago. I keep wanting to blame it on my living situation. I'm also just really bad at remembering to eat or sleep. My brain is dictator and doesn't care about the other organs. It's 3 AM and I can't sleep because I never ate anything today, except the dregs of day-old unrefrigerated kefir, plus three pieces of squaw bread: two had honey, one peanut butter. And one of those strawberry smoothies that say they're made with real fruit, taste like they're made with real fruit, but aren't made with real fruit. What a buncha bullhockey.