It hurts my heart to hear you say things like "I am always looking for something, I am lost." We talked about Tiger Woods and I said it was sad to see someone searching like that. You said you were looking too.
I don't think you are able to think about how special it is to have someone listen to you. I think you are hurting too much right now. But you can change that. I know that you have listened to me, really listened, and that I have done the same for you. This is the best thing in life, Thomas. Everything else is peripheral, and the celebration needs to be made to bring everything else up to speed, sometimes you have to try harder than at others. The mind holds all things, it can hold all things, it furnishes the illusion that is every single day of our lives.

Leopards in the Temple

Franz Kafka

"Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony."

three wondrous answers, Tolstoy

"One day it occurred to a certain emperor that if he only knew the answers to three questions, he would never stray in any matter.

What is the best time to do each thing? Who are the most important people to work with? What is the most important thing to do at all times?

The emperor issued a decree throughout his kingdom announcing that whoever could answer the questions would receive a great reward. Many who read the decree made their way to the palace at once, each person with a different answer. In reply to the first question, one person advised that the emperor make up a thorough time schedule, consecrating every hour, day, month, and year for certain tasks and then follow the schedule to the letter. Only then could he hope to do every task at the right time. Another person replied that it was impossible to plan in advance and that the emperor should put all vain amusements aside and remain attentive to everything in order to know what to do at what time. Someone else said that certain matters required immediate decision and could not wait for consultation, but if he wanted to know in advance what was going to happen he should consult magicians and soothsayers.

The response to the second question also lacked accord. One person said that the emperor needed to place all his trust in administrators, another urged reliance on priests and monks, while others recommended physicians. Still others put their faith in warriors. The third question drew a similiar variety of answers. Some said science was the most important pursuit. Others insisted on religion. Yet others claimed the most important thing was military skill. The emperor was not pleased with any of the answers, and no reward was given.

After several nights of reflection, the emperor resolved to visit a hermit who lived up on the mountain and was said to be an enlightened man. The emperor wished to find the hermit to ask him the three questions, though he knew the hermit never left the mountains and was known to receive only the poor, refusing to have anything to do with persons of wealth or power. So the emperor disguised himself as a simple peasant and ordered his attendants to wait for him at the foot of the mountain while he climbed the slope alone to seek the hermit.

Reaching the holy man's dwelling place, the emperor found the hermit digging a garden in front of his hut....The labor was obviously hard on him....The emperor approached him and said, 'I have come to ask your help with three questions: When is the best time to do each thing? Who are the most important people to work with? What is the most important thing to do at all times?' The hermit listened attentively but only patted the emperor on the shoulder and continued digging. The emperor said, 'You must be tired. Here, let me give you a hand with that.' The hermit thanked him, handed the emperor the spade, and then sat down on the ground to rest...One hour passed, then two. Finally, the sun began to set behind the mountain. The emperor put down the spade and said to the hermit, 'I came here to ask if you could answer my three questions. But if you can't give me any answer, please let know so that I can get on my way home.'"

Tolstoy continues on, telling of the sudden appearance just then of a man, wounded and bleeding from a deep gash. Together the emperor and the hermit cared for the stranger and they all fell into a deep and heavy sleep. Waking the next morning, the emperor looed to the wounded man who stared at him intently and whispered "Please forgive me." The story unfolds as the stranger tells of his resolve to take venegance on the emperor for the loss of his family and property at the hand of the emperor's last war. Seeking to kill the emperor, the stranger was instead caught and wounded by the emperor's attendants at the foot of the mountain. He then said "Luckily I escaped and ran here. If I hadn't met you I would surely be dead by now. I had intended to kill you, but instead you saved my life!...Please grant me your forgiveness." Reconciled and promising to make amends, the emperor sends the stranger back home guided and helped by his own attendants. Before returning to his palace, the emperor sought out the hermit for one last try to find answers to his three questions.

"The hermit stood up and looked at the emperor....'your questions have already been answered.' 'How's that?' the emperor asked, puzzled. 'Yesterday, if you had not taken pity on my age and given me a hand with digging these beds, you would have been attacked by that man on your way home....Therefore the most important time was the time you were digging in the beds, the most important person was myself, and the most important pursuit was to help me. Later, when the wounded man ran up here, the most important time was the time you spent dressing his wound, for if you had not cared for him he would have died and you would have lost the chance to be reconciled with him. Likewise, he was the most important person, and the most important pursuit was taking care of his wound. Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life."

Drawing in Space

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=10613

strings of the future

Hey Thomas,
I wonder what's going to happen. I feel like you want to talk to someone, sometimes I'm not sure if we talk because you need someone to talk to or because you really feel a connection with me. I think it's both. Right now I feel tired, like I'm making a lot of effort to maintain a connection with you, and that you're often acting out of fear. I don't know you well enough to know what you're afraid of. I'm not sure when to talk about it with you but I think you would benefit a lot from going to therapy. To do that myself has been the single most important decision I have ever made, and going there has changed my life and helped me communicate and have much healthier relationships with people I love. This is what I feel like would be really good for you.
I think the part that makes me upset is that we have had some drama and I don't want that because it speeds up feelings that should be a slow burn. I feel such a strong potential for you to be a positive force. I feel like I need you as a person in the world. I don't know what the configuration is going to be but I want you to take care of yourself and I think that needs to happen before we could be close. I have worked hard to become a positive person and I think that you can do it too, I know that if I try to get involved in that too much it's going to interfere with what we could have together.

Robert Bergman

I would like to go see this show with you, you said people should be making work about the body these days. Also, his story is amazing.

a good chunk o press is on the yossi milo website, you should go there, here's one article:

link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101202981.html

By Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Robert Bergman is standing in the National Gallery of Art, where for years he has wanted his photographs to hang. Surrounding him are dozens of pairs of eyes staring out from mesmerizing portraits he's taken, each with its own ideas of this space. He is 65, good-looking, trim and spirited, with curly white hair and thin silver-rimmed glasses, dressed in art-gallery black.

And at this moment he is looking at a gaunt face that bears a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln's. Bergman doesn't give any hint of what he found intriguing about this man he photographed, or who he is, or where the picture was taken.

It's part of the Bergman creed: no titles for the photographs, no identification of the subject, no information on the location. Just the year, just the close-up.

"It is my aesthetic stance. I don't want you to have any escape from simply reacting to the art," Bergman says, dancing slightly in his black nubuck shoes. "Telling the location sets up false assumptions. It undercuts your ability to understand and interact with the art. It subverts what I am trying to do."

What Bergman has attempted to do for decades is somehow gain recognition for his art. He achieves that this month with an artistic double whammy. His first solo show ever, "Robert Bergman: Portraits, 1986-1995," opened Sunday at the National Gallery. That will be followed later this month by a retrospective at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the hip outpost of the Museum of Modern Art in Queens, N.Y.

"I am deeply gratified. This is a show that has been gestating for 14 years," Bergman says of the National Gallery exhibition, pointing to the time in 1995 when he met Sarah Greenough, the head of the museum's photography department. "I have learned patience because I wanted to be here. I also don't compromise. I thought the National Gallery is where I should start."
ad_icon

Part of the reason for Bergman's rocky road is that he's an anti-celebrity in an art world that worships self-promotion. He forbids others to take his own photograph, for instance; if he didn't, his accidental subjects might learn to recognize him and that might break the spell of a shadow cameraman bringing fringe subjects into the light.

"When I first saw his photos, I was actually kind of amazed by the strength of the images and the extraordinary use of color. It's beautiful and saturated," Greenough says. "In addition, I admired his ability to put his subjects totally at ease and to capture them with these introspective feelings on their faces."

Bergman was born in New Orleans; his father was a doctor and his mother a local Shakespearean actress. His mother took her two sons to Minneapolis after his father's death. One photo, taken by a young Bergman of his grieving mother and younger brother relaxing on a Pullman car, is included in the P.S.1 catalogue. He continued to take photos before dropping out of the University of Minnesota, at age 20, to pursue "being a genius."

But photography was all he could think of after he encountered the work of Robert Frank, especially his seminal photographic take on common people in "The Americans." Bergman stopped using an 8-by-10 inch format camera, picked up a Nikon 35mm and has stuck with it. Ordinary people, those whose hardships were very evident in their faces, hands and posture, became his passion. Frank had shown him one core purpose, he says: "The artist had to have a personal vision through feeling and intuition."

The photographer set out first to find interesting faces, capturing pain, deep thought and marginal states, initially in black and white, and in color since the mid-1980s. He chose people from the streets in Minnesota, New York and other American byways.

"I kept wanting to be an artist, and people who want to be an artist can have tough times," he says, turning to look at his work. "And this is not fashionable."

During most of Bergman's active years, the Museum of Modern Art in New York was the chief arbiter of what mattered in the world of photography. "I had a general struggle. Most of the time only MoMA had the power to get work recognized. My work was not interesting to them," he says. "You were in, or you were out.

"I suffered a lot from not compromising, both financially and emotionally. I had periods of isolation, periods of self-isolation and rejection."

Until now, the breakthrough moment in his career has been the endorsement of his work by Toni Morrison, the Nobel laureate and superstar of American literature. He had asked her to write an essay for a planned book; her office at first turned down the request. He waited, certain "there was this connection," and she finally agreed to visit his workplace in New York. The result of this collaboration was "A Kind of Rapture," a 1998 portfolio of his work with an introduction by Morrison and an afterword by the late art historian Meyer Schapiro.

Morrison wrote: "In all its burnished majesty his gallery refuses us unearned solace and one by one by one each photograph unveils us . . . asserting a beauty, a kind of rapture, that is as close as can be to a master template of the singularity, the community, the unextinguishable sacredness of the human race." Morrison is making a special trip to Washington to talk about her friend at the gallery on Nov. 1.

With the book's publication, the critics found Bergman, and some were not so complimentary.

"If something seems odd to them, it doesn't faze me. One of them said they all look like they need dental work," says Bergman, laughing and pulling back his own lower lip to show some uneven teeth.

An anonymous donor gave the National Gallery some Bergman prints in 2006 and plans were developed for an exhibition. "Other curators have wanted to do shows, but he has been very reluctant to part with the work. The prints are painstakingly constructed and he is very protective of them," Greenough says.

As he walks among the eyes of his work, Bergman stands by a 1989 portrait of a thin man in a striped shirt. He could be in the Caribbean, or maybe Greenwich Village. Whatever you do, don't ask Bergman.

"There is also a moral dimension" to this, he says. "I did ask permission to take their pictures, but not to tell their stories. And I don't want to subvert your reaction," he says. "I'm looking for work with color, form, surface and intuition. I'm looking for rhythms, spatial dimensions, form and feeling," and for the viewer to fill in the blank slate.

Robert Bergman: Portraits, 1986-1995 runs through Jan. 10 at the National Gallery of Art, Seventh Street and Constitution Avenue NW, 202-737-4215, http://www.nga.gov.

High quality/New Jack Swing

I wish we hadn't fought last night in the car when you drove me home after the standing O benefit. I didn't mean to get mad. it's hard to know how to act sometimes, drawing boundaries and making them porous at the same time. that's the big trick, like making shells with seaweed.

I went to see this show this morning in Chelsea, the Bruce High Quality Foundation. I want to talk to you more about that show. I feel really hopeful that galleries are seeing the potential of collaboratives, but I find it weird that there is a pricetag on this work that they presented. but then, I was thinking after walking away, about what you said. we need to make $$. it's a conflict. maybe we make too much of that conflict.

I think things like the 179 Canal st are the best things in the world.

I am listening a lot to Pandora, which is tuned to Tony! Toni! Toné! I am just realizing how much tracks get sampled and resampled, I listen to hiphop but don't know that much about the history of it, or where it came from.
Like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glhdcJ7K3XM

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6586iJkPaXo

Rap Act

I would like to do something with you around rap lyrics. I don't really know what. Right now I'm listening to Nas at work. The first conversation I ever had with you was about Nas, and it was on the rooftop of my apartment looking out at QB!!!!!

Snow Country

Hi Thomas,

I wrote to you for the first time over Thanksgiving break. I think I am going to start writing some things here for a couple of reasons. There are a lot of things I want to tell you, too much for the time that we have right now. I think the time will bend in our favor. So, this makes sense to me. Maybe this will be the place that I record things I want to tell you later. Likely. This feels like a parallel life or thread of consciousness that is starting, like, a grafted limb. Or rather actually, a bud, so I'm going to treat it that way and not try to trim it.

We talked last night in LIC. It was good. There are so many words you have said that come together in my mind. You told me this morning on the phone that I don't have to apologize. That was good. I feel the same way.

It's early, 7am. I just got off the phone with my friend Ania, who lives in LA and happened to be up. She told me about a season in Poland in between winter and spring, when the snow melts. This is significant to me because the way that she makes me feel, which is also in part the way that I feel with you, or think that I am going to feel, is like swimming with my head under in a very particular temperature of water, deep cool. This has come to me in two ways in my life-in the Pyrenees mountains, all of the streams that we dip our toes in during the summer are melted directly from ice floes. Then there is a book I read in high school, Snow Country, by Kawabata, and I can't remember the content, but I think it is about the time between winter and spring, and the ice melting.

I get excited about the day since I met you. I mean, I have always been excited about it, but not this way in New York. I think that you bring the midwest here, or the feeling that I used to have when I drew. Or the feeling that I have when I make something now, its like, I am awake. That's all right now. I am awake.