Monsters (and other people)
Welcome to the 104th edition of this newsletter!
With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I'm hoping it will inspire you, too. If you want to support my work, you can sign up for my Patreon. This will get you access to exclusive material every week.
If Patreon is not your thing but you enjoy what I'm doing, feel free to send me a little something via Paypal. I'll use the funds to pay for the fee the service provider of this Mailing List charges me every month. If there's money left, I'll invest it into the Japanese green tea that fuels much of my creative work.
The other day, a box arrived in the mail. And by "arrived in the mail" I mean: there was an email notification. I checked the front door -- nothing. I went to the house in front -- nothing. I then checked the back of the house in front -- nothing. Finally, I checked the side of the little house I live in (there's a door leading to the basement). There it was. My box.
Why or how do I have to engage in this kind of behaviour? Well, the house I live in is located at "300A Elm Street". Note the "A". The house in front is "300". Half the time, people don't even look, or they don't know that "300A" is a different house. I can't blame anyone, given how shitty work conditions are for the delivery people.
Of course, I could leave bad feedback. But that just doesn't feel right to me. It is a confusing situation, given that as far as I can tell, this is the only house in the village with a weird address.
I've occasionally tried adding "rear building" to my address, but this has people think that it's the rear of the wrong building. That's why I check the back of the house in front.
When I moved in, I called the gas company to get them to switch on the gas. "Your address doesn't exist," someone told me on the phone. "What do you mean, my address doesn't exist? What is this house that I'm standing in right now?" I inquired. They switched on the gas.
For the US post office, this address also doesn't exist. If you type it into their online site, they'll simply take the "A" and put it elsewhere ("Apt. 2A" -- there is no such apartment).
This has been going on for 16 years now. You get used to it.
I have a similar problem with my name, Jörg. When US airlines ask me to provide them with my name exactly the way it's written in my passport, their websites tell me that that's impossible. The character "ö" doesn't exist. Of course, if I change it and then try to add my passport, that won't work because now the name is not identical to what's given in the passport.
Yöü get used to that as well.
Anyway, the box I mentioned had been sent from Japan, and it contained an assortment of green teas, one of which I'm enjoying right now. My order had been made possible by two very generous readers of this mailing list. Thank you!
I got a book in the mail yesterday that I had been looking forward to: Claire Dederer's Monsters. I don't recall how I came across the book. The premise seemed incredibly interesting to me, especially since I have been trying to find a good answer for the problem for a while: do we insist on the separation between the artist and his work, should that artist turn out to be a person with major flaws of whatever kind? (Please note it's almost entirely men for whom this problem arises, hence my use of "his".) Or how else do we deal with, say, Joseph Beuys who went to Stuka pilot reunions and spouted a bunch of other right-wing nonsense while also making pretty great art?
I'm pretty sure that I mentioned my "solution" before: there are so many interesting artists that I find it easy to engage with those that aren't problematic for one reason or another. But that's not a real solution. It does have its benefits, but it's punting.
I'm now 84 pages into the book, and so far, it's absolutely brilliant. I probably shouldn't recommend the book until I'm done with it. Maybe the next almost 200 pages are going to be real stinkers. But I doubt it.
The book originated from an essay entitled What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? (yes, it says "men") That's what would end up being the beginning of the book. Go, read it. It's brilliant. It's so smart. And it's written so well.
I'm so envious that I can't write that well.
Speaking of written well, Patricia Lockwood's essay When I Met the Pope is also brilliant and written very well. And it's really funny. It's a true story: the author did meet the pope.
Everyone is giving him things. This, to me, seems crazy. Why would you give something to the pope? He has like four things, and one of them is God. Imagine if I kneeled down in front of him and presented him with a critical essay about his 2015 prog rock album titled ‘Notions of Sleep and Alertness in Bergoglio’s Wake Up!’ Actually, one guy does get down on his knees and then sets off a wave of other people all getting down on their knees. I guess that’s how the whole thing started in the first place.
Every day, one of my cats comes into my office/studio (studio? haha! as if!). She'll walk to roughly the same spot and then stare at me. Mind you, while this is going on I'm facing the opposite direction, sitting at my desk in front of my computer. Somehow, I know that she's there. I turn around, and there she is, staring at me. Inevitably, I have to get up, follow her into the kitchen (next room), and pet her while she eats.
Every day, this is happening four, five times. I have now started taking a picture of her, in that spot, every single time.
I don't know whether the cat is a scientist that is engaged in some strange experiment ("Are humans telepathic, too?"), or whether she's some sort of performance artist ("The cat is present and demands your attention").
I also don't know what I will do with those pictures.
Funny, I thought that I had a lot more links for you. Turns out I had merely copied down some quotes from the Claire Dederer article. Here's one:
I suppose this is the human condition, this sneaking suspicion of our own badness. It lies at the heart of our fascination with people who do awful things. Something in us—in me—chimes to that awfulness, recognizes it in myself, is horrified by that recognition, and then thrills to the drama of loudly denouncing the monster in question.
If after reading the article you find yourself wondering how you can squeeze a lot more pages out of all of this: there's a lot more to the book. It branches out in all kinds of directions, some of which have come up in these emails. There's a chapter on what it means to be a critic, for example.
Did I mention it's a really good book?
(No, I'm not getting paid to write this.)
I have a couple more links that I think I want to share with you. I think that they're going to be interesting articles, in part because they deal with two artists (not photographers) I'm really fond of. But I haven't actually read the articles in full, yet. So those are going to be for another day.
You might have noticed that it's Listmas, the roughly 10% of the year where we all will be flooded with "best of" lists. I have one suggestion. A lot of photographers have copies of their own books for sale. If you're thinking of getting a photobook, check whether the photographer has copies. From my own experience I know that selling your own books adds a lot of work and stress. Buying a book from the photographer her or himself is a very simple and straightforward way to support that particular artist.
With that I'm going to conclude. The days are short in the northern hemisphere. Don't let this particular gloom (and all the other gloom) overwhelm you!
As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg