First, the good news: Human and I went to the nation’s capital, not to engage with the swaths of costumed merry-making students over-running the streets, but to find out more information about another video portrait. I cannot talk even talk about it yet. Things are super exciting and we haven’t even started! We are already coming up with ideas to experiment with as the work gets going.
Being in DC during the fall, I am grateful for hotel rooms that can be heated to 80f / 26c degrees with hot water that you don’t have to wait 20 minutes for. Pseudo-graffiti marks on the wall of my room won’t endear a place to my heart as much as a stellar heating/ cooling system. And good wifi.
But enough about hotels.
My year long illness gave me no quarter during my trip. With enough coffee and will, I managed to walk the mall and up down, and around the Lincoln memorial. The memorial is, oddly enough, fun and romantic, as well as inspiring and, well, heartbreaking too. people were respectful while simultaneously having fun taking pictures and just hanging out. With 360 degree views, it’s a great hang out spot! Just don’t sit on the steps and think about everyone failed by all the lofty ass notions that make up the American dr- delusional fantasy. That will depress the heck out of you.
I did have a peeve: Ya’guys need to take better care of the murals that flank the Lincoln statue! The right one is completely faded and without any proper lighting you can hardly see either of the paintings after sunset! So like what are they even doing there?
Fueled by a lot of plant based fast foods and seer determination, I saw just about everything at the National portrait gallery and the Smithsonian art museum. I have to give a shout out to Dorothy Moss for putting together a retrospective of the the work of Hung Liu. I wasn’t aware of this woman’s work. And I darn well should be! Her bright colors sing at you from the canvas! So much wow. I feel inspired and itching to create more work.
Before getting the art on however, gotta get settled into an orderly space; gotta start feeling better so I can clean house. Then- then!- tuck into a new project. Or an old project that been left sitting.
Getting on the road to feeling better again has involved intramuscular injections of antibiotics for a week. Being shot in the ass is not as funny as it really should be. After feeling the what it was like the first time, I opted to preempt the pain with an ibuprofen dose for the rest of the regimen. I don’t like taking that kind of drug daily, but it helps ease the hours of discomfort down to almost nothing.
I ‘m almost through with the injection part of the treatment and I can’t say if I am feeling better or not. I have to give everything more time. Except I’ve lost so much time not treating this illness already…