Bangkok, Thailand. 15 June 2025 (2568!)
From the Red Sketchbook
Oh, how time flies, with… with eyes, anyway.
Things happened. Other things didn’t. The Weed Show didn’t happen, or maybe it happened without me: in a fair parody of stoners organizing things, they changed the date without telling me, then changed the venue without telling anyone and then, I dunno, maybe they had their show? Not that anybody who didn’t stumble upon it would have known, since there was zero advertising despite having a dual-pricing exhibitor’s fee. (That means foreigners pay extra.) So, you know, ใจเย็นๆ and all that. I don’t wish upon them a future of intermittent coughing and the forgetting of appointments, they’ll get that by themselves, but Duly Noted: don’t sign up for the Weed Show next time.
Now I’m doing myself one better and having a Bar Non Show! Which is to say: a non-show in a bar! What is that? Well it’s not taking it to the logical extreme and just not showing anything; rather it’s putting a few pics on the wall of a bar that otherwise already has a bunch of pictures on its walls. So not a show. But also not completely not a show. And the bar is charming, I’ve been going there a bit, some of the other art is good, and if nothing else my painted faces will be in the faces of the bar staff, lovely people all. I shall, dear lonesome reader, elaborate when the time is right.
And pontificate? Maybe. The bar — it’s called Allso, it deserves more of a write-up — has a picture of a Pope, I think, or maybe it’s a Cardinal. At first I thought it was the New American Pope, then I thought it was the Polish Pope, and now I have a strong suspicion it’s actually Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers, who in all honesty would make a seriously excellent Pope.
In exactly four days I will lay me down to rest and get up and fly to Los Angeles, short stopover in Hong Kong. A hard bag of mixed feelings.
But for one, I can’t get Jennie Kim’s song out of my head, and to my surprise I’m not really bothered by that. This that pretty-girl mantra, this that flaunt, ya just touched down in LA.
I predict, humbly, that it will become part of the long-arc musical lore of LA; and it makes me happy that both she and Rosé/Rosie (also of Black Pink) went to LA to make albums. The other City of Angels (after Krung Thep) still has it! And that, gentle lonesome reader, is the extent of my pop-music knowledge.
LA will, I hope, not be in flames by the time I arrive. The protesters of today have a lot of moral weight, some of them, but many of the others are just the normal hopeless, mentally unwell lot you see at the Hamas rallies, and so far from a distance it looks like the first set is protesting very peacefully, the second set is making asses of themselves, the provocateurs have so far not goaded John Law into shooting anybody, and the looters are (still) distinguishable from these sets.
But I do expect it to still be under curfew, and I still love the Citizen M, and I am willing to be under curfew in order to see me a Kat Olschbaur. I have to “monitor the situation” though — yes there is a meme about that, no I don’t have a link handy.
Further into the Art(ist) News, I am still struggling with The Block and I am still trying to break free of it. Got myself a sweet vintage camera lens, shot some video, did nothing — but at least I have the footage. (Byteage?) And I bought a sweet little cheapo mixer, but same-same, not recorded anything. Have a thing queued up, at least. I finished a sketchbook, if slowly. And it’s not like I have no ideas: I have an absolute fucking abundance of General Ideas (pun, yes, unforgivably intended). Nothing quite as specific as what to paint next, but plenty to work with if I can pull my head out of the Black Hole.
Fact is, the ravages of time as visited upon Family and Home, plus a three-year run of financial disappointment and stress, have left me in a state. Not an inescapable one, I maintain, and indeed I think I’ll win this fight even if I’ve lost a couple rounds. But fooking eow my people, it’s been a ride.
And yet still there are moments of sheer unstoppable glory, coming at you like burning orbs in the night sky at 130kph.
Amnaj Wachirasut at ATT19 Gallery
Be well, Dear Reader, be well. Bis bald, bis Baldung Grien.