CHLOE PIENE
WORK BIO BIBLIO CONTACT

This is the Anthem.
This is the Anthem.
This is the Anthem.

I do not see a world of the living
Conquests without a king
Sad mouths
Empty their dark buildings
In which the son will derange his father
In which the daughter will derange...

It just breaks off there. Who will the daughter derange?


working class strange adventure in uncle vilnus

I am in Sopot. I was with people. I spent the last night alone and determined the whole time not to look at a screen. What a break for me. I am constantly paying bills, paying, paying, chasing after orders, scrolling texts, using apps to arranging above shit etc. etc. There is no peace.
OK.
This aside.
I woke of from a great sleep. I had: a great, or terrible dream.
Matthew picked me up in his white truck.
I was surrounded by wax casts of so many kinds of shrubs and greenery - all candles in little pots - very beautiful - and his dog Clover ran from the car. She was shy at first. I got down on the ground - at her level - I thought - and called her name. She ran to me - ran into my arms. Like a baby. There stoof Matt - smiling - and I held clover.
I woke up with such a feeling. Of joy, and happiness and comfort. I am so far from home. I thought about it. How...he is braided into my studio - he is part of the walls and the floor - a human - compass - of sorts - that extends to me. He couldn't give a damn now. But - he did something in the dream that was very simple and never quite happened so - and yet - the feeling was true - I can't think of all the combinations of Clover and his White Truck I've dealt with. Not all of them good, or fair, or kind. But I've driven that thing and been driven in it enough times.
No matter. The feeling was so precious when I awoke. And yesterday at stoof at the oceans edge and thought: there is Scandanavia. As if these feelings I connect to - in places - like Poland - and the northern, cool light and dark nights - were also once in a person of whom I dreamed often, a premonition before i saw him, sometimes in the most accidental and stupidest ways. No accident like this will happen here.
Why does the brain play tricks like this?

LITVAK

LITWAK

The working class.
I don't think any art is successful unless it moves strangers.
Richt. Becuase it's the power of the work alone. Now, there is so much babble and confusion and anger - inside the babble and about the babble. Yes I'm talking about social media.
The pressure on artists to spit out content as if art was made personally for Mark Zuckerberg is a serious and harmful mass delusion. War is there too. Cheap and free entertainment, your own stupid opinions, visible on a platform full of strangers. And yet - art - as a physical object - a real experience - will move strangers. Your life is not your living room.
This morning I wanted to write something about living rooms.
That is, I have no demostic experience. I know nothing about living is - a house. My dream always from a very young age - was to never marry to have a child and to own my own home. Those three together, I wished it watching my parents fight.
And so it became true. Sort of. I must now say - sort of. Haunted as I still am by a $5 fortune by a fortune teller in Kenmore Square when i was 15 that my life would become split. I didn't understand what that could mean. But...my fear of all things domestic followed me my whole life. Always happiest, living in the space of my own definition - my studio - my work place - my own language - to the porportions of - my caliber. One thing that I never had, and never felt comfortbale in, and this is maybe, the aorta of domesticity, or the idea of it - is Kitchens. I never had an oven. Always only a hotplate. Couldnt cook - well - yes I could but it always seemed like an enormous existential waste of energy, this strange, almost ritualistic and massive amount of time, doing stuff, making stuff, in a kitchen. And growing up, it was the mainstay and main area, of violence. So, funny as I look back, and there is a lot of looking back right now, between documentaries being made, colleagues preparing their legacies, auction houses reminding me that I was of the apex of fashion or collective desire - but not forever - for all - the life span of a fly - oh this has hurt so much. My work has always been my life, whether I have admitted it or not - it is how the poor, hardworking, working class in me, overcame the brutal absurdity and feigned superiority of those with financial power. Money was always denied, and in the way weaponized. So as I grew, I literally felt uncomfortable around the rich - I didnt understand comfort, relaxation, pleasure, and most of all, domestic life. A nice house. A nice car. A priori for some, absolutely foreign, scary, and also, alienating. I was raised with the clear and direct message that middle class comforts and any and all sense of security - even a key to the house - was for others. Not for me. It's strange to think back and to realize I was never given a key to my house, where I was forced to stay. I didnt want to be in that violent place. I was treated, literally, like an unwanted guest, and if not that, the only real focal point, was as a punching bag.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are.
I always thought this idea came from Aristotle - but it's Rousseau.
I have also learned that with intelligence, comes pain. This Greek think of the blind seeing ahead of what others cannot see - it is terribly, terribly true. To rip out ones eyes for the price of seeing into the dark depths of know irrefutable truths that others pass - inchoerently - another way to say - blindly - is a lonely road to tread. I will never feel in my whole life comfortable with life's comforts. Shopping. Choosing furniture. Malls. Comforts of domesticity. I heard somewhere that Decartes stuck his head in an oven to think. That he was rather sickly and unwell. I write this as I stare at the brick of all essays by Montaigne given to me for my birthday - a re-read. Because I loved him, connected with, so unabashed, unafraid and blunt - about his body - the body all his thoughts - say in, uncomfortbaly, always. Bourgeois comforts. They were marked in the way a criminal is branded, with cruelty, in medieval times, as undeserved. For others "not for you". And so always, always, I have identified, or over-identified, with the working class, who have more to do with descartes in my opinion, than the bourgeois - but mind I was positioned in a place of exile from it - by design, so maybe what I write is not fair - but still - the act of work was always my safe place and and sanctuary - and also - a place of love - the hardworn blue color immigrant side of my family - who actually gave me the time of day, and were not violent. I am made uncomfortable my bourgeois things, although, I understand great beauty - in all things - no category there - so in that - there is inclusivity of class - but the I see the bourgeois accumulation of things and prestige - in things - as a peculiar form of blindness - not understanding struggle, risk, and grit. ALl that is takes to probe deeply into anything dark - and there is no life without shadows, for without that, there would be no light.

And this is a lot to deal with. It's like - all along you were a leper. And you feel so exposed - or mistaken - for someone without sores.

My whole life I have dreamed about living in isolated places. A stone cottage in the Scottish Highlands - an irish one, on the side of a stone hill - next to no one - a light house - and last one all - a tree house or cabin in the woods - of my design.

I read this article that some would find extremely depressing and maybe it is. Or maybe it isn't. It's a commonality I think and this is the denominator of being a person - and let's not way woman - who has never experienced love or care. I have experienced white male entitlement - in such a way - that I was part of that dynamic - but I didn't understand it. It's gross, manipulative, self effacing, and wrong. I mean, it robs a person of their life energy and for what reason. To the advantage of another. There is no dialogue, no respect, no concern. I really have wished my whole life for - concern. Like, for someone to - make me a cup of coffee - or a tea - when I'm sick for example, or ask me how I am. I grew up in circumstances where no one ever asked me how I was doing - most of all - if I was OK - and I faced the most obscene violence in my own home - I won'y say "my own" because it was not a space for a child - and I never was given a key to. I was treated like a guest - an unwanted animal - a strange inconvenience - my whole life. As if the air I breathed was too expensive - I was an expense - that was annoying and also - a flashpoint for any form of rage or projection that blew up - randomly - out of someone else's neurosis, world view, convenience.

And that's is the kicker - to fold at the convenience of another - there is so much fear there - because if you don't it could - and will - or might - get much worse. So - as an adult you cleave to those who don't care- because that's all you know - all variations of the same indifference - orbiting - around you - without a clue as to how to pierce the membrane - and enter a space that is welcoming - and safe. I never could - and still cannot - even see - when someone genuinely likes me. I have to wade through the possibility of inconvenience - this is more scary - than anything - because - on the other side is a lot of terror - and possible harm. I realize just how cruel - and stupid - such a space is. It's where orphans roam. I realized, late, late in life, that I never had parents. Just those - hellbent on harming me, neglecting me, enjoying the show - of suffering. My father, whose cruelty still unfolds with time, as we find more information about him - information he witheld - everything was witheld - information about life, about my own family, my identity, amazingly basic facts about his parents - their origin that he never once told...I know because my daughter found a random interview of him. This was by design, a kind of raw and awful jealously, something terrible, existential - what father says to their daughter "you were born to suffer." And that's it. And then - violence. Always, violence. Sabotage, fake advice, interrogation, jealousy over - exhibitions - plane tickets - dinner details. Any form of success. I was forced to see this person on a regular basis. It would really have made a difference if it was said upfront: "hi you must spend prolonged amounts of time with this person, and please be aware, that they will try their best - until their very last breath - to rip out your soul. And know also, that they will have a lot of help."

How is anyone meant to survive that. Where violenceis so normalized, you are supposed to find love - get married? Marriage is a matter of terror for me - always has been. Parntership - a danger. A front - for a violent space - development, enablement, no child is safe there. What horror, that someone is meant to grow through this only to be thrown out into the world - and place nice.

I'm surrounded by paper dolls.
But gain sustenance, only, from the salt of the earth.
Ireland you live and breathe through me - with graves to the sky.
I lost my virginity in the shadow of Ben Bulben (true)
I returned, again and again, like the woman in the stone house that Becket describes - only to climb the stones - and gae at the sea. Again and again. Again and again.

Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.
In places of the earth: I am unchained. Blood flows there. Not as a spectre, apparition, desperate shade, but as a rooted cord - that I cannot deny. I did not run from myself - but rather - the spectre of those who sought to rob my soul. Oh what evil people can do! What evil people can do - to make a deer bolt and break its legs.

What is like to live a whole life never feeling safe. So many decisions - in the quest - for safety. So many awful, horrible decisions. Just to feel safe - not knowing - what the fuck that feels like. It's a dark forest out there - and all around. What's outside - becomes your insides. The threat - of the threat - lives in you - and controls you - has love ever been more powerful than fear?

What would Pete Steele say.
He's in that line with Duerer and HBG.
I looked him up and realized I saw one of his last concerts: I was pregnant. He was so fucked up. So drunk he couldnt find the mic. I just saw a clip of him where he talks about music being his job - and how much he respects the working class, how they get up in the morning and take pride in their work.
This is all I ever cared about - or at least - related to - as much as I could see my own version of life, I could see - into life - in my own way - with a strength I never doubted was my own - like a sword - you weild - that is part of you - you will be buried with it. So when working class people with no background in art, with no education, with no primer, or push or whisper - about whatever the fuck they should look at - what they should like - stood - and stared - and stopped - and gasped - and proclaimed with joy - WOW - at what they saw - there was no analysis - no - always a gut reaction. Without a gut reaction any anaylsis will not be good and a gut reaction - its a connection - not a disconnection. They did this - the postman - and my grandpa - who became a greeting card salesman after being an egg salesman and a camera sales - supporting a family of 6 at age 12 when his father died - he dropped out of 8th grade and had to start somewhere - all this out of their normal routine - regular life - only then had I felt that I had done it - I achieved - what `I was meant to achieve - which is to connect two powerful things, what lies - under the surface - unseen - unwritten - the invisible - under the earth, behind the skin, behind, what's behind, me...always in an intuitive with my hand - the hand I was born with.
The language is intuitive
Even architects, to make anything must first draw, without thinking, even if it's the largest comission on earth.
So the postman gets it - where a super collector might just - get nervous.They can become conflicted sometimes. They see great work, but are ego driven and are obssessed with status and rumor - and do you really want those people at your table? Some artists do. Like Geroge Condo - he just goes to parties, celebrity parties, then acts naive, and says he had never heard of Kanye West. Also Matthew Barnet, former fashion model. That will do it. That's really what he and Bjork had in common. We always had this sort of spar - over projects - he wanted to get certain high profile models involved, or celebrities, in his pieces - and I would say: why. How do you know they will fit the role. He just wanted the visiblity they brought, and I rejected that. But that is in some ways, with some, not all, all they brought. Because models, and model types, are projection screens, they are in fact, empty on the inside, that's their job. To be so neutral and passive, so as to form and conform to the shape desired - they are only there as hat stands, however the designer has cleaved their vision to hang fancy hats.
My friend Paul saw a work I SAVED from Sotheby's (post mortem great collector - slash and burn) from my first ever solo with Marianne Boesky - let that be known since Sotheby's called around 7 times questioning that fact - it was idiotic - severely - please fire all of them because they re-write facts with glib PR material pulled out of their stressed over educated clueless assess - I had to deal with Gabe Catone - the art advisor - telling me in confidence that "Marianne only dropped you from her gallery because Rachel Feinstein said she refused to show there if you were there" Rachel - the great Copycat - talentless model wife of a famous blah blah painter (sorry John you are a good painter but you absolutely cannot draw - it is not your passion) - no offense to John or Gagosian - I call this out because none of these people can take it all for free simply out of jealousy - but that was the driving currency in their little hearts...You can see how stupid it is at the start - and why - intuition is the real substance that binds truth together - into a force that sits there beofore on a wall, in a space, like a great peak. Paul Brainard, he saw that drawing - and he knows my career - and he said - wow - Jeanne (Greenbeg) bought from that show? I'm suprised it wasnt too - you know - edgy for her. Jeanne is smart, and has impeccable taste. Sometimes, taste, for the postman and the not good but great collector - is absolutely one and the same - becaise in real art - so it is good art - appreciating it is a very simply the recognition of truth. It gives back to the viewer, click - the viewer sees it - in it - and in a moment can see it in no other way. And that's it. THAT'S ALL. So is art then, just the stripping away of all the babble to get to the unadulterated light? Oh it's hard to be here and listen to Pete Steele rising back up out of my being ---- I forgot - it's such a strange feeling to forget a core part of your own self as if he were a friend, like...Duerer. Montaigne. Rabelais. But they did not sing in my time like Pete did. And suddenly I feel:

NOSTALGIC
A concept I always hated. Like hippies. Will always. And the modern new age Bouge "Boho" Yoga version is horrid.
There a lot of them these days. Crossed with corporate interest. What am I doing here. Wow did my parents not give a flying fuck about any part of my life. I was right when I was 15. And I tried to make that fact wrong for the rest of my adult life...until now - when I see it all clearly again. As if I am 15. Hello 15.Youa re with me forever.


Wake up
It's Christmas morn
Those loved. Have long since gone
Six feet
Beneath me sleep
Black lights
Hang from the tree
Accents
Of dead holly
Red water
Red water
Red water chase them away

I cant
lose
you

Saw a clip of PS talking about how he better look good on stage - in shape - not fat and flabby with "tits hanging out" but he could hardly perform - and the band carried on like absolutely nothing was wrong, nothing happening. He died not soon after of sepsis. No idea how. He was 49. And he drifted away - into nothing....but had been so important to my studio and was from Brooklyn. Had been a trash guy. Became a rock star. Was so fucking talented. And people come to my studio...and want early works. I made it that far? Where I could die of sepsis - or am I dead already of sepsis - the infiltration of a dowbward arc - superimposed and perceived - like a net to catch me - stop me - arrest me - burn me - pre-maturely. Confidence is key. I had no idea Type O Negative was so close in friendship to Pantera and Phil, died before Pete Steele, also pre-mature. He became fat and fucked up from drugs. I loved Pantera.
I always joked to my friends (Matt Barney, Ryle, their whole crew, Vinny Castiglia, what other sundry metalheads) that we'd end up in an old folks home - listening to Pantera - so - are we there already? When I saw Matt in Vienna - the ONE fucking time he extended himself publicly in my direction - having taken so much - or maybe - that's someone's self centred concept of "exchange" - lopsided - he spoke in detail about the Beyler foundation - how all his works will be left there and custoded - that uber powerful collector and he having arranged this - some years ago - high maintenance indeed - and I'm sitting in this thermal bath - Oberlaa - thinking only of the water and me, my body, the piece I will do - what I cannot plan, cannot expect and I'm awed at the level of support he has...what it takes to keep alive - Total Excellence - something I have - but I'm a shadow in the room - cutting corners - confused as to what support really means, never having really had it - hardly with any sort of lense that could recognize it - it seemed - the only alternative was to be a viscious self interested creature with no talent at all....
But this is what I wanted to say

Hey Bacchus
She hates me
Hey Bacchus.....
She hates me
She said
Well burn
Forever
Well burn
Together

I listen to this, and feel he is so alive. It sucks. I'm struggling with bizarre weight gain, lack of motivtion and a split soul. So much cruelty to contend with in truth and clarity at a later age...If you die young, you never have to face these things, you are just terrified - and man up - then die - never knowing?

The horror: of insecurity - and wisdom. These two things put together create some greek condition not but not yet described by the ancients - homer, socrates, euripides, aristotle, thyuddices, didordorus scisculus, and plato - Sothebys rhymes with some of these, and this is the horror I face - at the cruel hands of petty, mean jealous, hysterical and mistaken - me - for a bourgeois object of inheritance - I cannot express how cruel it is to warp my identity based on the most brute and shallow prejudices- me for being female - me - for being beautiful - me for being the spawn of an assumption that in truth was a monster - this turns all these presumptions - the monied assumptions - into horrific stabbing and mutilating swords...trashing my identity - devaluing my work - my life-energy - i am dissolved in a cloak of self doubt and despair - that my being has been broken by more and more hands who never cared - but who pretended - and who assumed - i would be the objecto of a legacy - and lineage - one that in truth never existed and was only ever abusve. This is heart breaking at a soul level - I look and my work and it seems almost foreign to me - as if i - my exisstence had no import - no worth- not even substance - not even - the beauty of something ephermeral - it makes me feel like a lie - when I knowI am in fact - the strongest of truths.

and here in this place where i faced death - a kind of elysium - also fleeting - of a different life - once where i gaze form the outside - my identity shattered - no one to hold and to love me to prop me up for what i really am - waht i carry wherever i go - i cannot climb that ladder - that power - i cannot bind to the big money in any way that i understand - as iwas so exploited and abused by all those around me - those who pretended - in spurts to be the ones who cared. My heart broken, cannot create - the beauty that I am. I feel consumed by the gaping jaws of misogyny - it was all posturing - all fake - that someone would fixate on destroying me, again and again and again, at a certain point - a person must lose their will to live, and they become like an empty box, silent, their voice - lost - out of any dilogue - in desperate need of exchange - with the truths that sustained them. Voices lost - scattered, shattered - and my own, i cannot find my bearings, my coordinates, a ship in the fog - where when you call out - you hear nothing - the fog has no dimension and consumes you like a sponge. Isolation. It's a killer. A place where you cannot thrive, or create. Impossible space. I think I am describing a landscape from a Beksinski, or Soutine, they are similar, but I am in it. Lost.


The horror of Hamas. Day one, I cannot express in words - my understanding.
For the record- my former French dealer unleashed her deepest rage - on me - for calling her - justifiably - an anti-semite. I have zero tolerance for self hating Jews. Who betray their own - and me - for not conforming to whatever bizarre image she had built - based - on my looks? And non Jewish parentage (father's side.) Zero, zero tolerance. "I could never take you to Dubai." That rang continuously in my head. That this difficult person, always cutting a little extra off, here and there, whining about - fair and complex production costs - but over paying on everything unnecessary (stupidity) - screeching - etc. psycho gallerist behavior - basic - was called out for exactly what she is.
I have zero regrets. It is just interesting to see - how blindly others follow - and the Jewishness of my work - ignored - never spoken of - for - fear - of reprisal - no seat at the table for a Jew, eh?
Happy Pesach to all. My daughter is a teenager. I think of the hostages. I know what psychotic people are like. I know what Hitler is like. I grew up with it, was raised by it, and was hated for who I am.
Never mess with me on this point. Look at what happens now, thanks to all those self-hating Jews trying to ingratiate themselves into what they perceive to be a "more desirable" non Jewish world. Go eat with the scum of Russia, and the funders of Hamas and Hezbollah. None of them have any respect for you. What you sell is a parking spot for their money. Might as well be watches. So you waste your breath denying your birth for a momentary glance, while their real energy is put into huge, nefarious projections, aims and goals, that would anyways destroy you.

It's not a good investment.


I just returned from the most fucked up surprise.
Baba Jaga.
My Dinner with Andre. Her name is Dorota. My name is Chloe. My Dinner with Dorota.
Poland is – deep - never shy. Never superficial. If anything - afraid of saying the wrong thing - lest it be superficial. It can be jealous, petty. But never superficial. It wants to win. Really win. No matter how much it has lost. No matter what has been said - if ill seen, ill said, there may be anger, a bit supressed. Some jealousy then. OK. Jealousy that has deepr machinations.
The blood in the ground - boils back up. In rage - in eyes. Questioning, always asking, eyes that ask. Besseching eyes - rather - not - rather penetrating and wanting to know.
I'm about to digress: forgive me. Forgive me. I did not know how hurt. How trapped. How scared. What courage it took for you to step through my door. My idiot of a former assistant had absolutely no right to be there in our presence. None, none, whatsoever. So I swear - I swear onthe blood in my veins - that something so sacred to me - will never be shown, revealed, said, in the presence of someone so unfuckingworthy.
How carefully you prepared.
You had to get stoned.
How you wanted me.
This thing i saw - suddenly - you saw me as such a prize - so special - so outside - your every dream...
when all the while - I saw - in the extreme - as something.....I recognized - while you - were in awe. This is the terrible mistake. The terrible gap. The terrible leap you had to take, to cross the threshhold. How you prepared. And I did not honor: this fragility. Because I didnt see it. Because there is so much of it in myself. And so it is true - that I saw you in me - that we are the same - but not for you. FOr you I was a prize. And you sandwiched it all in the AM as if this was all the space and time you had to hold your breath to be in that magic space - of mermaids and fishes.
If only I was the dumb manipulative kind. A real gold digger. Aren't we both lambs, in our terrible shyness. Only that raw desire cut through - it shot through me like fire - your gaze suddenly changed - right into me - from one thing - to the other - and I ran. I ran like you, like a baby lamb. So that's all we were doing all that time, trading off - being each other. You, a scoundrel, me, The Other. The Sea Creature, The Alien. Are you really fit for a golem? No, it's something effervescent, and then hot. A state change - so fast - once you were in a door opened and I did not expect it - my walls so thick and guarded - all steel and iron - what welding torth does it take to cut through the doors and to my heart - you had it - and I ran.
Poland. Nothing is taken for granted. Not money, not stories. Not food. Go further east and you will not waste the flesh - of that apple. Everything is eaten. Every last bit on that core.
Baba Jaga aka Dorota. She said: someone's female line is cursed. This pronouncement of a curse. Who? What? Why? Where did it come from?
My line of "strong women" are in fact a bunch of paraplegics wrecked by men. Or themselves. Broken and stupid, like cogs in some dumb machine. Fueled by self hatred - from what. Blockades to good fortune, connection: real relationships. The glue that creates strong bonds - that builds forward - that is fruitful - that creates. They are dark empty houses - howling wind tunnels - they have woken up everyday to their Misery as their bed companion and shrieking lonliness as childish tantrums and bane. What role models. Role-models. The mannequins that surround me. The crowd of ghosts in the closet. Prohibiting joy - at every level - no strong hands - nothing to lift me - see me - laugh with me - no strenth. Just - a cracked, fanged, drain, to suck the life blood from my very heart.
And then me. All of a sudden - the focus turmed totally to: me. What...?I was confronted by my good husband. The husband I am worthy of. She said "this is possible for you now". Having spent a lifetime avoiding weddings, crying, feeling so existentially lost and uncomfortable at the prospect of such a thing. And I walked into this room a stranger! I was late! I came in silently! Muttered a polite:Dzien dobry. How could she touch this nerve? This horrific undeserving. This seismic, gaping hole that makes everything on the surface - fragile.
I faced him. A woman played him. Unbelievable - to feel and see this - in front of me. Some feeling I have never felt before. Can I stay there lingering in that space - forever? I woke up sweating last night - back to my usual tryst - with anxiety - soaking wet. I took all my clothes off. Worried, worried, worried, about things some people never fucking think about. Ever.
This ended the 7 hour session of all of it - I - a stranger. But, I also had to hold hands with an actual dude who she said raped my mother. This was strange. As a young child - not knowing what rape was - but I suppose - I must have - this moment concerns me to this day - I asked my mother how it was possible that she could grow up and not be raped. Jesus any sane mother would have hit the roof at this question. She acted like I was asking about the weather.
So, to this dude, who in this situation - and say - thank you for creating me - even in violence. Even in war. I had trouble doing this. I held his hands so tight like maybe he would hold me up, I was terrified, just, unable to bear his stare and allow anything to transmit - because I could not actually forgive that. Uneasy is not the word. Terror - yes - terror. How do you thank someone for creating you in violence. I suppose I must not feel defined by that violence. But I do...My eyes wandered around the funny room with the crack in the paint - one crack. I imagined blood seeping out, a wound in the wall. With this group circling around - orbiting - like the drunks in that constellation by Bela Tar - all one organism - of Time -a time creature - shaped a flattened and curved by violence. One terrible proclamation was made, it rang so unbelievably true: "success is a product of shame." My worst suspicion was actually bleated out in a clear sentence - by this stranger I call Baba Jaga but her name is Dorota - how witchy and powerful she was. And my "mother" just couldn’t and wouldn’t get over the rape - I stood by her - she clung to me - clung - to my haunches - hanging on me - and I supported her… I support you. I support YOU. Creepy. How could I want to spend time with my biological father - who was a rapist - I thought only of how unsafe this is - the concept here of forgiveness - fundamentally - dangerous - forgive what? it is not a person; it is not a father- it is a force - a creature - a thing - that infects time - time is bent by this thing. I gripped his hands - unconsciously - as if I would fall - so scared - knowing he was only playing a role - but maybe the real him would save me from the role him - because his gaze was hard - it was so hard to look into his eyes. They were like a wall - the wall the role built. If you were to see into each other - you would fall. Oof to hug him, I did, he tried, but I almost choked. It was so hard. To run, to run! I ran, I ran. I run, I run. I run; I am so afraid of what could happen. When do you stop running. For my daughter, she should not run. Oh, but she needs someone there - both the role - and the real one. And this thing I wrote - a dialogue (song) between myself and a courting devil came to me - and does:
"see how the outer sun: hungers for the inner one."
I have much work to do. My terrible suspicion - shame makes success is so true - it's like - a form of flight - to touch the stars - to know they are there for you more than piece of bloody pulp fronting as a guardian on the ground. In the back of my father’s car - trapped - at night - begging some god to save me. Praying to the sky. It's all I could see in the frame of the window a child lying back there, looking up - the black night, and the stars. I begged. I remember, begging in my mind so hard- to make something happen - that would free me.

Written 1999:
CHLOE AND THE DEVIL
This Wretched Lonliness (aka the Antichrist tries to marry me)
Audio CD
Part One
(The Antichrist Speaks:)
This wretched lonliness
Has run its course (he's ready to tie the knot)
Go there, get my horse (he addresses his posse)
Paraplegic consort
Bearing picks and sharpened spades (they prepare for the wedding)
In dress attire
The clothing of the dead (digging up corpse wear for the banquet & ceremony)
Makes this my bridal bed
Drape the skies in lines of locusts (the signal)
Let's load the ship (to get ready for the journey to pick me up)
She's is there, standing strong (he is visualizing the goal)
On the dead horizon
Will she resist (he wonders)
My putrefying kiss
With devil speed
Dark angel come to me!
See how the outer sun
Hungers for the inner one
Black bloated tomb
Newly stuck in the morning dew (he's getting romantic)
Emanates from her smile
This lovely child (he thinks I'll be the perfect wife)
She will rule us well! (says his consort)
Her lower stratum is my hell (he thinks I'm hot)
CHLOE RESPONDS TO THE ANTICHRIST
Your Sordid Gifts (My Response to the Antichrist)
Audio CD
Part Two

Pools of bliss rise up to meet you
Cats cry, dying to please you
You look straight at me (the Antichrist approaches)
Geriatric death kiss
Intervenous lethal fix
Your weapon walks (his power)
Up & over the tree tops

When I saw you coming at me
I knew I was not just a city (Bethlehem refers to me/per Yeat's slouch - this creature)
Flies, bats, moles & mice (his crew)
Fire on fire
Burning tires in your hair (what he looks like)
You kill without a care (his attitude)

Blood makes you strong! (what he eats for breakfast)

You try and surprise me (his strategy)
By bending on one knee (he proposes marriage)
Your sordid gifts
Black hope & death projects (his status items)
Underestimates my kind (aren't good enough)
Interverted dog whine (the sound the Antichrist makes when he's angry)
Triple headed whore!! (his retort)
You'll get what's yours!

What follows is kind of boring - but true - so I put it down for now:
I've been looking at clips of Basquiat. When I was around 19 - I saw a video of him. "What difference does it make what dealer I show with? They're just shoe salesmen." I awlays think of this. I thikn about people's perception of dealers. I think about how artist's have to eschew dealers - block them out - how artist's are maybe - the most misunderstood by them as I've never actually felt supported by one. It's a transaction. They spit out invoices. Sometimes they are not even good at that. I thought about it when looking at his shitty grave - the one his dealer bought him. Also the cult of death - it's so delightful for dealers and auction houses when artists die young. If you age - beware - you will be punished. The cult of youth - and the new - extinguished at a point of infancy - such that -growth and development is handed lock stock and barrel to a profiteer. It's in control - of another. People don't like it when artist's insist on control of their work, their destinties. I cannot name a dealer today who even gets how to frame my artworks. The level - of technical expertise required - only a few choice collectors in germany shook my hand in wonder and said "it's just amazing, these frame specifications that you do." Because they get that a Mercedes or a Ferrari just isn't the same as bicycle. Considering how Basquiat is - post mortem - traded like currency - he should have a Necropolis. But no. He has his shit stump of a stone -a real cheap one. A stub, in a lot row, parking lot style. No fuss. No individuality. Next to a cop. The cop has all this NYPD paraphernelia piled on it. And Basquait, little painted rocks and notes. It's so crap. And then I think - he died young and made so many people rich - then richer. That strange ropey man, with the spectacles. At my friend's wedding. We were leaving. Sitting alone in one of 4 seats at teeny tiny Telluride airport. I didnt know him. I didnt even know he was at the wedding. He just turned to me out of the blue and said: "You know, you're a great artist." (???) "But you're not a great investment." (I remember thinking to myself: investment? Who are you?) He looked a lot like the Nazi officer obssessed with the Ark from the first Indiana Jones movie. That's all that registered. Slithery - strange and insidious - like that character Poole who goes after the cake in Ministry of Fear - one of us - is one of Them - this grand intimacy - he arrogant, I oblivious.
Brutality is my mothertongue. Maybe this why I am so good at language. I only wish someone had told me this, at the start.
Because violence, coveres them all. Sounds. Intent. Things - under the surface that rise up and appear in shared form. I can latch onto others I don't know - because of the others I do. In these last years my heart was so broken, I did not recognize the wound. Always with a sword in hand - it came like a surprise hit. A direct hit. From where. That person once said to me: "beware the dark thing in the room" and I understood. Such horror, that follows - you take it with you. Those awful words - I cannot erase them: "you were born to suffer." I can't ever get it out of my head -that my own father would gift me this proclomation. Anf force me to smile against such force. So that I ahve been pushed around by the ridiculous, clownish perception of others. And in the end I must fight to regain my teenage self. That part of me that never cared suddenly stabbed by 1000 cuts - invisible - to all but me. I wonder always what my life would have been like if I grew up in a loving environment. I have been in this position before. Where I feel such enormous loss, or fear - fear that I will lose what I have - by force. That it will be taken from me. It's a real fear, because it happened so many times, since birth - first, this idea that I deserve nothing - second, the disregard for what I do have, what is precious to me, even if it is just 8 books that I have cherished since childhood: what hate, what psychosis, to make them disappear, and then pretend nothing happened, of note. What abuse of a persons trust, in the place where they did not chose to sleep, but must.

I look at exhibitions now, and shows in galleries, and most seem terribly weak. Like, decor at some store. A kind if piddling, fading, bloodless group of crumbs. "Will this work?" I cannot tell you how much it hurt me that my own ally and lifelong friend trashed a work at auction - in a rage - against what I don't know - against - a collapsing world - what hung with Beuys, what hung with Cecily Brown and Laura Owens. Oblivious to the importance and the power, now as then. Unaware of what a drawing even means. Scared, just scared - and all of this hysteria started - because I called a dealer - no longer mine - an anti-semite. I confided this fact, and paid for it - in spades. I could have omitted that information. I could have lied. I could have made a bunch of shit up. But then again, the importance of showing in places like the Albertina, the Leopold museum, is unseen. With Sara Lucas, Louside Burgeois my "show buddy" - just a fixation on this dealer. Hysteria. It makes dealers to be like a disease. And really genuinely disgusts me. What in the actua; fuck are you doing for me - as opposed to doing TO me? Indifference, incoherence, lack of communication, lack of effort, lack of understanding. I am sick and tired, of being the punching bag of angry, jealous, mediocre forces who try for a lifetime to be relevant - like an artist. I cannot tolerate jealousy in any form. But there it is - everywhere. "You were born to suffer." Who in the fuck says that to a person, to a child, the one with the bright light, the one with the talent. Not a word of encouragement. And so you grow, and see, more of same, vultures, to pick at you, eat and dine with you, and offer, no words, ever, of encouragement. Your individuality - is secondary - to their fear.

I really don't want to be this. I am not secondary. I didn't askto be stabbed in the heart for the soul that I have poured into my hands - with great power. And a mind who, with respect to history and those like Duerer and Hans Baldung, has studied carefully, the efforts of others. Nothing is superficial. Nothing goes on the coffee table. Nothing is without a deep dig into the origin of great works, great minds, and great mystery.
You cannot stick Dionysus on a coffee table.
I spoke to someone in NYC a self stated collector I believe, about Warren Niesluchowskis essay on me. "Oh. He was a writer?" He only wrote the greatest thing my eyes ever touched - on drawing - for my work at the Albertina. His mind was - a force - and wow - what a deep dive - like Derrida - into what I invoke - and the power of what a drawing - is.
Medicrity will kill you. Sorry I am not that. I feel always that I am being asked to lower my standard. To be - more like the others. To - as the sleazy head of my graduate school program sneered "you have to learn to play the game."
Once I walked into an empty room , in a Museum, and I thought it was a memorial for the missing. I thought it was brialliant. A place where you expect human activity - ti deny you of that - suddenly - your is lost - you're at a loss - you experience loss , you try to think of what should or could be there. What a neat trick. But in fact - for some reason - they had emptied the room in ordert o fill it up again for some human function. Isn't that how history works? War is a cycle - they never stop - the ground is cleared - place are re-built - people want to forget - and to remember - small cold slabs of stone - or artistic bronze - some tiny mark - to remember a thing that is so huge it detroys space itself. It has no dimension. They could architectural, often figurative - a fancy headstone to mark the passage of total chaos - a massacre of time, space, reason.
Thinking of the Golem in all its forms that I have looked at it - these years - totally unaknowledged. Literally, dealer stood there with a lot of claptrap and had no courage to speak of it. May it come forward and do justice to anyone unspoken for in their truth. Dealers lie - or - speak from a place of grave insecurity, unless they really stand for you. In my mind, I think I have always liked the truth of the Golem, that these letters, in their power cannot be altered, the ones that bring clay to life.

When I was in graduate school I imagined 12 potential husbands. Later I read "Ill Seen Ill Said" by Beckett. I thought it uncanny that the little peeks - sharp and clear - a lace cuff - way to a home made of stone - I realized later - was it a neolithic tomb? They all have a sea view - like hers - on the high rocky mounts - open to the stars, at the atlantic edge - she too had 12 - or 8? Suitors. As many as there are planets - she is the moon. I was thrilled - to understand this. Beckett never says it - describes it. Those tombs - always cast in moonlight. I have a good photo of myself - naked by a fire - the night was full of a gigantic, bloated sphere - unbelievably huge, as it rose - I took off all my clothes - and with to friends - I got photographed by our favorite burial mound - the one we call "The King". The one I always return to. I thought - if Heidegger expanded - there would be a condition of being-with. And if that is true - how would he describe that condition. Being-With. Because, his book is Being * And * Time. Sein UND Zeit. Does he ever really address - the And. The And as a stte of being, and a state of Time. In Beckett - it is All Time. The return - of the king. A perpetual motion, in all 12 of those men - in the distance - they approach - then recede - every night she goes, and sees, and waits, for something that never arrives. Like the ghost-woman in Sinéad's song: for Jackie. So she roams the sand - waiting - for her Jackie O. O, Of Some Father. O, aphostraphe. And when Sinéad died I cried in the shower as I sang the entire length of the Lion and the Cobra blasting it so loud, the entire album inscribed in my heart it gave me so much strength as a lost and lonely teenager, alone. The suitors never step to the shore. They belong the the boundary of the ocean and not the land.


My train to Warsaw was stopped by a suicide, in the pitch black of night. Really dark. I was amazed they announced they had hit a person. A chatty ticket lady gave us cookies, said it had been a woman. It was so strange to be sitting in the thing that had killed her. Technically, we had all killed her, together. There is never a chance, I was told, for a train to stop. And the driver and crew must get out to see what they hit. Confirm, and then bring in the whatever team who must investigate. We had to jump to a train on paralell tracks. So spooky as I'm writing about Szaposzcznikow and Beksinski - just sent this strange photo image Beksinski made of a woman lying on reailroad tracks with her mouth open. And I have this odd book published of drawings made by a railway worker who maintained the tracks near Madanjek. People would jump and one drawing, which stays in my mind, is what of a hand. A severed hand. He drew on scraps of newspaper and anything he could find - to bear witness, to the truth. And somehow they were preserved and published into this obscure thing that I found, and own.

I am struggling now - under pressure - to publish a serious book with zero backers - at the moment - it feels very wrong as so many people are asking for a new damn book. And those who don't understand the profit the energy and the public desire - bury their heads in their myopia. This is not a space for bitching, but that is what is happening today. I won't lie that lack of visibility and jealousy and a difficult life, make their mark on one's confidence - even when you know, that you were bron to create. So, the Golem, is and will always be, a good friend of mine.

I'll tell you what felled me. Not that I did the impossible, not that I became an epidemologist, not that I saved something marked for death with no known means to lure it back - in the middle of growth, and development - when it should be brimming with life and joy - all this aside - I will say - that in these horrible years - which I did not understand - I did not feel anything. It was only in the aftermath. Somehow I was affected - somehow - the impression it made went so deep - that it was the reflection - in this awful mirror - not of me - but of others - that no person ever asked: are you OK. No one. Not a soul. Defintely no family. But the process was ongoing. The recovery - long. Careful. Delicate. Unchartered terrain. Against the warnings and the terror of the words of the best doctors who understood the brain and this thing best - I will never say them. I will never tell them. I will only carry them. Because they still resound in the possibility of the future and no one should ever, ever have to hear such things. Like walking on glass, so carefully, so gingerly. with the shame and fear and the pressure of the expectation to rejoin the living - as if - nothing had ever happened. I wont forget that swim coach who literally threw her into the deep end of a swimming pool because she had heard she had swum in the Netherlands. These were traumatic things. A little girl who had rode alongside trucks to school who now was winded after pedalling for 10 minutes. It. Took. Years. As if I could have written this - in this field in inexplicable terror and indifference. In the words of my exceptionally gifted friend, who has won so many emmy awards; had it been some other mother - she'd be dead. He said that recently. And only recently could I accept - that he was right. I'm not scared of that, I'm not in awe. I'm only in awe - at the indifference and blidness of a world who could not utter these three magic thins: Are. You. Okay. I had to take her to Venice. I had to take her to openings. She was in a state of shock, and recovery - both - as we walked the canals - she walked alone. The thing that Beowulf had the courage to dive into - only she saw - she experienced - Grendel. Only one collector - offered a cup of tea. It was magical and fabulous - and noble in her bearing - always she is this. I only now understand the akwardness of emerging from a black cocoon with wet wings. And it i not my akwardness but the akwardnes of those - who have never faced death. And I would fall, I would stumble, I would break my wings. With things like Instagram and Facebook blaring the details of faux processes, studios and a lot of paint. Drawing is always this timelapse thing of an illustration taking shape. I have yet to see anyone do a real drawing on instagram. My studio being my most private sector, I spoke about other things. Foreign affairs. Stupidity. Life. Not everyone is PT Barnum and those platforms sell the lie - the illusion - that you are there with the artist as they create marvels and wonders. The Man Behind The Curtain. Oz in his laboratory. The Alchemist at Work. I would rather watch a silent movie. The Golem: 1921. I remember some critic named Max who I never really got to know - he came to the studio. I didnt understand why he was there. Did he want a tour? I was in the middle of working. He just stood there. Didnt ask questions. It's like, cut yourself and let me see whats under that skin flap. I can't do that. I won't. I have never been a fashion model who can talk for hours about nothing, and themselves, whatever they have borrowed from others. Heidegger isn't their thing. But their skin has always been - a surface to look at. And they make it so easy. They show, and show and show and show - they show off, because there isn't much there. Pfouf. That Rachel Feinstein and I were best friends all of college, I was laughing when recently Gagosian was blabbering about her Northern Renaissance influences - actually she was modelling with Clique agency and that was my major!I thought: did she take this from some internet press release - of mine? I'm naive. I don't see jalousy when it's standing there green in my face. I suppose - I don'y give AF as I don't see color. But when I do I'm always angry at myself - for not seeing it. Should I? Be more strategic - make paintings of birds. Joke. Nah. I stick with the Chabad - thanks. They are the ones who deserve credit for literally bringing the dead back to life in the most historic of Synagogues - was it by chance or destiny that we were in Lublin? That first meal. In that historic Yeshiva. Completed in 1924 with the photos of the Rabbis of Poland and Ukraine all around. They brought us back into the world of the living. After beating the odds. Lieder des Ghetto von Morris Rosenfeld. Illustrations by EM Lilien - my unsung hero!

Full room
I saw you see me.
The whole room filled up with the just one thing. It drowned out all the noise in the universe, it was so large.
But I ran away
What's the difference between that and death. I think there's a confusion in me, that part wasn't you.
I was so afraid
So you bolted.
Rejected
Your eyes were naked for the first time
All that stuff you wrote to me was real
You were just - shy.
You'll never let yourself have what you really want.
Will I?

We are both orphans. In truth. In that moment - we were not. But I bolted. And so did you.




I got the copy of Montaigne's full Essays! To re read. He was a hero the moment I read his first 3 words - as a 20 year old.
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THE ART WORLD RIGHT NOW?
WHAT HAPPPENED
It's a reflection, a mirror to global paucity. Things get crazy. When people are scared. Insecure. Desperate. Unsure. Paradigms of wisdom, knowledge, accumulation, lean into intuition, just got replaced by Late Stage Capitalism aka liquidiation of all structures into the trshheap of chaos with no hope for a point of singularity.
I thought the other day if I were teaching, or giving a guide on "being" and artist right now - that one must be sure to be as mediocre as possible. Excellence is sneered upon, preservation is seen in opposition to something glib, conversational, celebrity driven - to be dumb - is to be valued - models are better now than artists themselves - but innovation and risk - is impossible in these conditions, as people chase after that steroid injection - where steroid injections have replaced any semblance of real muscle.
RAGE IS UNACCEPTABLE.
Unless you are a white, male, or want to be one. I never thought I would say that - because I can ahrdly differentiate between genders. I don't even undetand them. An artist is an artist. Not more, not less, not anything but. So fuck being a woman, and fuck being a man, I never understood high heels, I am too busy working. I would always buy men's work boots because you can stand in them for hours.
I write some awful personal content because I feel so betrayed. I suppose all content that is personal shouldnt be awful but - I dont understand how people cry on each other's shoulders, have support when people like - die - or - are dying - but me - I'm supposed to be nice and friendly all the time. My close friend and father figure to my daughter just buried a most important work, part of a series that hung with Cecily Brown and Laura Owens at the Whitney Museum, in a jewlery auction in San Franciscio. It was an act of rage. it was personal. I raised myself. It's an awful feeling, to live with shame. Because youre lying all the time about your happiness, your true condition, what you did over the summer - everything - is a construct - to get by - to get a chance - to perservere where one day you might be allowed - through sheer grit - to join the living. Fast forward: I end up with this French dealer who thinks I am something I am not. But I didnt understnad this. Didn't understand why I apoke French so well, but German only so so and pegged me instantly I think as some legacy child. Then, I confide in her, in person, the last I saw her, what happened to me visa visa my fathers dark death no funeral, renouncement of his German citizenship and disinheritance of all his children (4 real ones) poof - she's gone. So I confided to my closest friend and ally, someone I respect above all others, powerful art advisor, and he, followed suit - without no explanation, no respect - not a word - not even an email - tries to hurt me, harm me, harm my daughter, by desecrating a master work. He probably doesnt even remember I studied Art History at Columbia. He at Yale. I think he thinks all artists are just - wanna be Kim Kardashians at this point - willing to bend with the fell wind no matter what? I am just: my work - for all the Judiasm woven subtly in so many pieces - know one ever dared write about this except for Patrick Painter - he got it - of all the writers on planet earth who have written about me - this friend - whose child was so close to my own - killed me on purpose - from a collection that was his namesake - and how he used to complain, and bitch - about her - parent's were Holocaust survivors. And that has no meaning here - but - he knows I called this dealer an anti-semite - with good reason - and that is what made her rage. So - anti semites - and - inexplicable hatred. I am not a fan of self hating jews - or people who use my father's own violence against me - he who wanted to extinguish me, mock my achievements - was jealous of every show, dinner, step and breath I took - the fact that I got really sick once, for example - she follows his lineage of contempt, and now, one of my closest art friends as well. This is how insecure people are. And how the "market" really is. So I suppose my intelligence and my love of art history, and archeology is a curse I should regret? Better off dead? That's the message being sent in no uncertain terms. Money laundering and gossip - be Kardashian.
This dealer is notorious for behaving outrageously toward people and turning them away - collectors, journalists, artists, her own staff. At a dinner not long ago with a very good journalist they had been so tight - same damn thing happened. Just - a loose cannon. Maybe my close friend and former father figure to my daughter is - the same - running after the explosive rage of every loose canon to make a buck and then rage on the very product that made him rich.
Haters, gonna hate. Look at all that hate. I just followed the instincts of my soul and I am not even a zionist. I just take Judiasm seriously, with respect to its culture, it's influence on me - of so many, many influecnces in the deep crevasses of time going all the way back before Pompeii...
Thanks to those who support me in their love for good art, for talent, for genuine expression. Dealers should say upfront why they support you what their strategy is and what the arc of interaction looks like to them. Fair is fair. Shrieking hatred and vengeful envy should go to therapy - not the art market.
So it really sucks to be harmed in the silence of jealousy and anger in secrecy - vengeful envy and confused proejction. I do not need some psychotic French dealer stabibng me to pieces for my lack of Aristocratic bloodline - circuitry of power - in the fragile net that attaches ego to money to art. Sorry. I'm a blue collar Jew who fought very hard and found friends in Montaigne, Maupassaunt, Sartre, Camus, Annouhil, Celine, Voilatire, Rousseau and ANatole France. Most of all my BFF was Genet and the films of Cocteau - not his drawings I never liked them. And of course - my temple of space: Notre Dame, Gothic Cathedrals - and the tombs of St Denis, I always visit when in Paris. Now I have a new place, at Noget sur Seine - the musee Camille Claudel - she had to be put in an asylum for over 30 years to be foud only a few years ago? Keep it going people. Afraid of a shadow that is not that of your fears, which you keep in your pocket, because they are so easy to invoke, it takes only an intelligent woman who chooses her talent and indepdence over your expectations which she does not even recognize, or know.
And wow did I have to fight to be seen, just seen, at the dinner table - never mind - the world. I remember the first time I was in Vogue, I was very proud I made it in there, I was just in a photo, some small thing, my father pretended he didnt see the magazien, or me, standing in front of him, showing it to him, he literally pretended that I was not there. Inside a house, he stared blankly ahead of him, silent. And I said "look dad, look." He stood silently, and then said something mundane about dinner, and moved away. It was so hurtful. What the fuck. Who does that. Can you imagine the depth, the bottomless pit that has to exist, to do that to your own kin
Keep white men away from me, and let the world evolve past the insecurities that choose inbred security andthe marriage of older men and their money to young minxes to make everyone feel acceptable to each other. Talent will be stifled and it is the job of those people tp blow confidence into the room, and with that - money.
I am sorry CLaude Berri committed suicide. He was a talened man who bought nearly my entire show 2 weeks before taking his life, in Paris.

Celine, Genet, Homer, Nietszche. I saw the grave of Proust at Pierre Lachaise. A memorial for "All The Poles Who Died for France." My friend laguhed. He joked, "Do you think Poland has a memorial for the French who died for Poland?" Of course not. We talked about Petain and the Vichy government. As we walked the streets I said to my daughter, "See all this beauty? Imagine if it was bombed, like Warsaw." Of course, all the finery and food of Paris, Germans can't cook for shit. A crude assessment, but, they would have wantonly wreck Paris - they wanted it as is. And Petain was this little sheep-poodle. Hitler had some kind of fixation on Poland. A place to build camps. A place to extend territory that was already mixed - liek the city of Gdansk - it was ruled under a German Polish cooperation - so it's not like you has German speaking areas in France. There is a strange push back, lined with a bit of terror at the mention of Poland. Some mix of - fear and something else. Are they still afraid of the Russians who seized it - from whom they had to run? I know a handful of Germans who say: "oh yes, my Grandmother/Grandfather was from an area there (now Polish) I shoud visit." But they don't. It's like - this forbidden zone. Well the camps are there. How many Germans are visiting them? None that I know. That would be an intersting mandatory field trip. Survivors sometimes visit camps. They come full circle. But interestingly, I never met a German who willfully has done this, and openly discusses it. It's as if the border contains the pain, and it's Polands issue. Poland does actively work on it. The Jewish comunity is involved with rememberance and digs that continue, where they find mass graves. They have them in Germany too. But they are not digging them up. Intersting how the Russian destruction of that great dam in Ukraine revealed the skeletons of German soldiers, mouths open, they looked so expressive, like they were screaming, with their helmets strapped tight, to their heads.
My friend just described a fun wedding. I go to no weddings. I have a ways to go.

Claude Picacsso died. I am good friends with his ex wife of ages ago - a marriage that last not long - a New Yorker - from the hip scene of the 60's - she is my mother's age - I thought I him when I learned the horrible story of Camille Claudel how such a talented bright force was institutionalized for 35 years by her own family - just to control her art. Disgusting. What families do. Jealous family members. It's like you should be born and the first thing you should do is walk away from your family, to preserve your life. Jesus, in the 19th century such talent and just - exploited - because she was female. I don'y see anyone putting Rodin in an institution. It's not even explained what excuse they used to do that. And I think of how cruel Picasso was to his son. Another blind narcissist - I can relate. Hateful towards youth, hateful to was he perceived only as a threat to his virility - to his life span - asshole. Sara described how Clause, when they were married wanted to introduce her to his father, naturally, he was in love and proud. So they drove to that property Picasso bought, with a view to Cezannes mountain, the one Cezanne was so obssessed with, some kind of Hotel Particulier or chateau. I know that mountain well because I suffered through an entire semester of Cezanne and always fell asleep during class, staring at eternal views of trees from that location. They went to his property and there was a concerieg guarging the gate. He explained that he was claude, the owner's son, and after a little while the conceirge returned and told him his father was busy and could not see him. They had driven all the way from Paris to this bloody location and his father would not let him in. Then came a gaggle of contractors to work on the hoom laughing and joking and the concierge opened the gate immediately and they sauntered past...Picasso's own son, and new wife. So there stood Claude, helpless, and they drove back to Paris. Similar to my father, Picasso never gave him anything. Once, I was told. Picasso randomly sent him a poster, signed, "to Claude" or some such thing. ANd that's it. He yearned for inclusion, yearned for his love, his whole life. You know, the crueler parents are, the harder the heart seeks attention, seeks, redemption, because children are essentially good, and need love. But he never got it. There was some kind of relief I was told when the management of Picasso's estate went to Claude, but there he was, defined by his father, again, but in a different way. This story stuck to me. I was treated similarly, with abject cruelty, a horrible kind of jealousy, just for being alive. ANd being female. And being talented. Three strikes, my father wanted totally to eliminate me. I was the most threatening creature on earth. Not a daughter, an object, into which he poured his hatred, and he had a lot of help - from wife #4. It made her look like a loyal fiend, willing to go to any lengths, to prove her loyalty, to seem like an ally to his hatred, to his paranoia, to his distorted lens.
Glad that's over. But it fucked me up in many ways. I can't to weddings. I dont know what they are. DOes tht alone put me in the category of Art Brut? I am so annoyed that I am haunted by the wife of John Currin my whole life - not her - but her mixish stupdiity - her main qualifications coming for the fact that she was a fashion model from a very ritzy private school - my college best friend who many said - was entirely jealous of me - yes well - sorry babe - you dont have the talent but you know what to say, imitate, copy and just BS about...because you are a fashion model to the girl, a princess, and nothing more. I cannot help this, but I detest being used by it. My own step sister, and step mother laid the ground work for this dynaic, such harmful and hurtful - psychotic - jealousy - for no explicable reason - from the earliest days of my childhood. It really affects me. I looked at Rachel's recent show at Gagosian of all places - she is a great operator - and her work absolutely sucks.
Blind Daughter of Tuonela that I am
Blind Daughter of Louhi that she is
The Beauty that you feel is not what you see
That I see
You are so blind, more blind, than me.




Pisze po polsku. Bo zacze?o si? tam w Polsce. Gdzie ktos si? urodzi?. Nie tam, gdzie otworzyla si? wrota krwi. Moja wrota krwi. To bylo gdzie indziej. Napisa?em o tym do programu, który zrobi?em z Hansem Bellmerem i za ten tekst Gabrielle Salomon bardzo mnie pochwali?a. Jest gdzie? tutaj, poni?ej. Brama krwi, o ktorej mowie, to inna osoba, w innym miejscu, w innym narodzie. Mówi innym j?zykiem. W jakis sposób nasza krew - sie skrzy?owa?a.
Ale jak to mo?liwe. Aby cz?owiek krwawil, musi zosta? poci?ty. Musi by? rozdarty. Musi zostac zaatakowany. Z czyms, o czym nie mo?e ?ni?. Mo?e co? ze stali, w fabryce, albo w?ókna gwo?dzia, co? najbli?szego zyciu, przymocowane do dloni, ale wkrótce odci?te. Tylko w ten sposób cz?owiek mo?e krwawic. A je?li tak, to jak zmiesza?a si? nasza krew?
Nawet a ja to pisz?, a t, h, ja, s, to w?a?ciwie o nim – on – nie ja – ale on – odbudowuje siebie. Zacz?lo si? nie tutaj. Zacz?lo sie w Polsce. Zacz??o si? od mojego cia?a. Zacz??o si? od jego spojrzenia. Zaczyna sie od zamknietych oczu. Zacz??o sie od mojego lona. Zacz??o sie od ch?ci mieszania. Ale nasza krew byla ju? zmieszana.
Jak to jest.
Jak to si? mog?o miesza? – juz.
polska krew.
I my?l? o w?ciek?o?ci. I jak blisko jest do mi?o?ci. To nie jest spokrewnione, ale siedz? w komnatach blisko siebie. Ich przestrzenie mieszaj? si?, jak zmieszana krew. Mo?na powiedzie? trucizna, ale to jest krew.
THE BLACK THING IN THE ROOM




Can't hold my breath from another
You are the imperfect storm.
My feet are falling from the ground. My head up in the clouds from the core. With fainting eyes.


I hate it when our eyes meet. You know when you have peered into a person's soul. Why did they let you in. Just a crack. But they won't open. To you, they are like the air you breathe, it feels like, blood, in your veins, what you see, what you feel, when you are cut, you bleed them...they come pouring out of you. But they won't let you in. They just show that they want you. But do nothing
And you wish you had 1000 babies with them. How dare they speak of such things with you.


LOVITAR - Blind Daughter of Death

"Loviatar, vaimo vanha,
pahin Tuonen tyttäriä,
ilke'in manattaria,
alku kaikille pahoille,
tuhansille turmioille.
Sill' oli muoto mustanlainen,
iho inhon-karvallinen.
Tuopa musta Tuonen tyttö,
ulappalan umpisilmä,
teki tielle vuotehensa,
pahnansa pahalle maalle.
Selin tuulehen makasi,
kaltoin säähän karkeahan,
perin viimahan viluhun,
kohin päivänkoittehesen."

(Elias Lönnrot, Kalevala, 5th Rune, 1849)


TRANSLATION 1

"The blind daughter of Tuoni,
Old and wicked witch, Lowyatar
Worst of all the Death-land women
Ugliest of Mana's children
Source of all the host of evils
All the ills and plagues of Northland
Black in heart, and soul, and visage

Evil genius of Lappala
Made her couch along the wayside
On the fields of sin and sorrow
Turned her back upon the East-wind
To the source of stormy weather
To the chilling winds of morning."

TRANSLATION 2

"A girl there was of Tuonela
blind
Pit-daughter
an old woman
the worst of Tuoni's daughters
wickedest of death-daughter's
source of all ills
a thousand downfalls;
she had a swarthy face, a
skin of loathsome hue.
Well, that black girl of Tuoni,
the sightless one of the depths,
made her bed upon a road
her litter on evil land
lay with her back to the wind
her side to the rough weather
her rear to the chilly blast.
>
TRANSLATION 3

"The girl of death's domain was blind, Lovitar, an old woman
Death's worst daughter, the wickedest daughter of the Abode of the Dead,
source of all evils, of thousands of disasters
She had a very dark coloring, a vile colored skin
That dark girl of Death, the half-blind one of Waste-Land
Made her bed on a pathway, laid her pallet on bad ground
She lay down back to the wind, aslant to the severe wind,
Back to the blasting cold, facing the dawn."

 


CHLOE PIENE
 
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