Tonight I went with Richard to a lecture: "Is G-d in the Picture: Representation and religion in contemporary Jewish art" (or something like that). It was actually a panel discussion, with one of the speakers being my friend Evan who did a great talk on his artwork.

The main speaker was an Israeli art historian who was really amazing and a good speaker. He showed a lot of artists who were, of course, grappling with Judaism in their work, and questioning religion. In my own work, I'd say that I grapple more with being Jewish than with G-d, but it feels like the same thing or very similar. A few interesting points:

- He began the lecture with notes from someone diary -- an artist, and I didn't catch the name -- who died of lung cancer in the 90s, but who was in the hospital, and underwent a series of operations. And he thought he saw god and he tried to depict him after the fact, but it was impossible. He was a small, ugly, creature. Then he said something like, later, when I'd look around, and I'd see small ugly creatures, I realized that god is all around us. It made me think of my own views on complexity and chaos of the universe, and that perhaps mathematics and science in its patterned complexity is moving closer to what, perhaps, god might be.

Richard rags on my because I say I'm an atheist. Actually, I saw I'm a Jewish atheist, which I see as something different. And again, in this lecture, he art historian talked about how god is contradiction, a paradox. I see my own views this way, paradoxican and absurd. And I see much of Jewish belief and history to be absurd as well, contradictory, etc.

Someone near the end asked a question, "Can you tell how religious an artist is by their work?" And the art historian asked, how can you tell who is more religious, the person who prays every morning, or the artist who grapples with the subjects in their art? It was interesting, as though, art is its own type of ritual and prayer, and just another way of exploring belief and faith, and identity. Which I certainly believe.

Anyway, I want to buy this guy's book now. And go to some of his other lectures.

It was nice to hang out with Richard, but he confounds me most of the time. I also was thinking, Stu would have enjoyed the lecture.

And then yes, I arranged a booty call during the lecture on G-d in art, but it fell through later. The guy (Mike) wanted to go park! Jesus fucking christ, no thanks! He just wants his cock sucked. I told him what I wanted -- which was indoor sex -- and we just didn't get together. But it was late. Maybe another day.

Random thoughts

Just a few things before I stop for the day:

I enjoyed blogging about art previously, and I'd like to do more. I've also enjoyed blogging in general so far, so I hope I can keep it up. Maybe things would improve if I ordered internet at home instead of stealing wifi. I thought I had another good idea, but now it's gone.

Oh yes -- I should screen cap my CL stuff before it disappears, so the links will always link to something, to a jpg. That's it.

Hey, Asshole!

I'm obsessed again. I'm searching Stuart on google. I'm trying to find information or a lead on who the new sucker -- I mean hooker -- I mean girlfriend -- is. It's pointless, and moot, I realize. It just makes me sad. A pic came up of him sitting at his Canzine table, and it just made me sad.

I make no claims to be over him. I'm not. What he did to me was devastating beyond belief. I still have trouble believing it -- and I go back and forth, days where it seems like just the memory of a bad dream. Other days when I would kick him in the balls if I saw him in person. Or at least call him an asshole to his face. "Hey, Asshole!"

It was really interesting -- I asked Mike why men go to hookers. Same generation as Stu. He put it really simply. It's like going to a Broadway show, and you're in it. That makes sense to me, actually, but that sounds like someone who has come to terms with their desire and their sexuality, and who understands the differences between these things. Mike doesn't seem like he has many hangups, though. Stuart, on the other hand, didn't want me to say the word "handjob." What else are you supposed to call it, asshole?

Very Meaningless Encounters

Been a busy week, so the blog's been dormant. My mom visited on the weekend. I forget what else happened before that. And then I hooked up with this guy. (Later, I found out that he is also this guy, but I didn't know that -- not the ad I responded to, and he was too embarrassed to admit that was him at first.... but it became apparent eventually...)

And he was a nice guy. Mike. Lovely time. I might see him again before he leaves town, I dunno. I'm actually not sure if he really enjoyed himself. I think he did, but I guess this is my own insecurity that inevitably comes up, especially after Stuart.

But also it reinforces my feeling that no encounter is meaningless. This was very instructive. Mike reminded me that all I really want is a nice boyfriend, not a nice hookup. (And Mike is not boyfriend material, that's for sure, even if he lived in my city.)

And of course I've been reading Stuart's blog, and getting annoyed. He's doing a reading in Cobourg, where the new hooker -- I mean, girlfriend -- lives.

I had more to say but I'm late for work, and now just annoyed and fixated on Stuart.

Evil thoughts

I got the following from Endgaget, and I thought -- this would be a really evil story to send to Stuart (from me), given our history (which entails my finding out about all his sexual activities by way of a keystroke logger):

Keyboard "eavesdropping" just got way easier, thanks to electromagnetic emanations

by Paul Miller, posted Oct 20th 2008 at 1:14PM

We always knew those electromagnetic emanations would amount to no good, and now here they go ruining any shred of privacy we once thought to possess. Some folks from the Security and Cryptography Lab at Switzerland's EPFL have managed to eavesdrop on the electromagnetic radiation shot off by shoddy wired keyboards with every keystroke. They've found four different ways to listen in, including one previously-published general vulnerability, on eleven keyboard models ranging from 2001 to 2008, with PS/2, USB and laptop keyboards all falling to at least one of the four attacks. The attack works through walls, as far as 65 feet away, and analyzes a wide swath of electromagnetic spectrum to get its results. With wireless keyboards already feeling the sting of hackers, it's probably fair to say that no one is safe, and that cave bunkers far, far away from civilization are pretty much our only hope now. Videos of the attacks are after the break.

[Thanks, Dave]

Compromising Electromagnetic Emanations of Keyboards Experiment 1/2 from Martin Vuagnoux on Vimeo.

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I want to marry this man.

Paul Klusman, from Wichita, Kansas, if you're reading this, and are interested in a lovely 38 year old Canadian woman, please contact me. Aspect ratio forthcoming.

So shoot me

Depression is a tough one. Hard to shake and anything can shake you. Just chatting with a friend -- a guy who I happen to have a crush on, sort of (and he knows) -- and he tells me about this other girl, this other friend of sorts, who just asked him out. It's no big deal, or at least it shouldn't be, but of course, it makes me feel like the most hideous and undesirable human being alive.

My day consisted of going to work. We hosted a panel discussion today, and it was actually really inspiring. I'm shocked when things inspire me, it's such a foreign feeling of late. One of the speakers, Sharon Alward, is a prof from the University of Manitoba, and she told of her amazing struggle to attend art school, practice, and then teach as a woman during a time and at a place that was actively hostile and toxic toward women. She had a moment in Winnipeg, after she had come back there to teach, where she was being persecuted. This woman, who had done her graduate work with Chris Burden and Mike Kelley in California, was being told she was unqualified to teach. She fought back, and she won. But it resulted in a deep depression and medication. Eventually, she found martial arts, and got herself back to a state of living.

I really identified with this aspect of her talk, personally, for sure -- since my own work and personal persecution over the past three years has taken its toll. So much so that I am so off balance lately that I can barely remember to take my crazy-pills, my drugs. It was inspiring to see someone so smart and sharp come out whole.

The whole panel itself was really interesting, and this just occurred to me. The underlying theme was about fraud, versus qualification. Everyone on that panel in some way fought against, or grappled with the idea that they were fraudulent.

I grapple with this every day that I don't make art, and that I allow myself to be drawn down by the undertow of depression. If it were the 70s, I could shoot myself, but that's just so overdone.

This is me

I posted this the other night.

The weeping is mostly the result of my being haunted by my long memory. Letting go is difficult when you have a detailed and vivid memory. My ex has been hanging around lately, in my mind. Stuart. We broke up less than a year ago, but it was a long, difficult, protracted breakup over about two years. I still love him, of course, even after everything. Most women would have run screaming immediately, but I hung in, hoping things would change, asking for them to change. Finally, I decided they probably weren't going to, no matter how much I longed for it. I just wanted him to make me number one, for once. To come to me, and say: I was wrong. I want to make you number one, and try this again. He just couldn't say anything. Nothing.

I've been dreaming about him. My dreams are just like reality: he's moved on, and I am still pining for him, begging for him to come back, pathetic. In reality, it's the same, without the begging.

Meaningless Encounters with Random Citizens

I've decided to start blogging again. I've spent the last two weeks weeping every morning and every night. Not only a form of therapy, blogging gives me a bit of a voice. And I've felt pretty silenced of late.

The undercurrent that will probably run through this blog is my love life, and lack of it. Interspersed, I'll probably reblog interesting things (on the side) and talk generally about my life. Who knows, maybe I'll even be moved to blog about art.

On that note, last night I was at an artist talk by Daniel Barrow, a Winnipeg-based performance artist (he prefers to think of himself as a comic book artist, or a film-maker!). He does overhead projector animations, a little like an old-fashioned "magic lantern" show. He gave a spectacular, atmospheric talk. I had the honour of being his technician. I don't think I did too badly, considering we didn't rehearse. My biggest gaffe was on his first cue, I couldn't get the VCR to start. I retried all the inputs, turned it on and off, hit play a dozen times, and nothing. I looked inside the flag to see if maybe the tape was jammed and -- aha! I forgot to put the tape in. It was somehow fitting.

Barrow narrates stories about the disenfranchised. His slide series called The Face of Everything featured little-known, or D-list celebrities, often queer -- like Wayland Flowers, Rip Tayor, Kristy MacNicoll -- and gave little capsule biographies, concentrating on the pathetic but still fascinating moments of their lives.

This series won me over, but he closed with a portion of his performance entitled Winnipeg Babysitter. Taking clips from cable-access shows on Winnipeg Cable, and then animating contextual narrations and captions, he tells little known stories about this little known phenomenon that's an important part of Winnipeg cultural history. The portion he performed was about The Cosmopolitans, a music show hosted by two women, German immigrants to Winnipeg (and later revealed to be lesbian lovers), who played standards like You Are My Sunshine and Tennessee Waltz on drums and organ. It was the last performance clip of the night, and as soon as it ended -- describing the death of on Cosmopolitan (Louise?) and the deterioration of the other (Marion) -- he thanked everyone abruptly, and turned on the lights. Sitting at the tech table, raised slightly above the crowd, I was a bit on display, and when the lights came on, I had to quickly wipe the tears from my eyes that this moving and sad vignette caused.

It made me wistful and deeply sad. Here were these two women who were outcasts in their home in Germany. They came to Canada looking for freedom, and still encountered hardship and discrimination because of their sexual preferences. In the end though, their lives were full and happy, and they had lifelong love and joy together.

It made me deeply sad that I will likely never experience that kind of love.