Willoughby Sharp is showing
Videoviews of Joseph Beuys, Chris, and Dudley. We drink Southern Comfort
and throw a giant bag of popcorn at the UCLA Film School audience. Chris
signs master's degrees from the Fat City School of Finds Art and Dudley
answers questions like, Do you ever think about suicide, Mr. Burden? The
audience grows hostile. Hostility follows us around town. A stranger
wearing a suit remembers, hits Willoughby in the face at Ships. He is
sitting with his back to us at the counter when we enter. He stands and
swings a hard right cross to Willoughby's bushel of beard, and Willoughby
crashes through the swinging glass doors, which gives Chris an idea. A few
weeks later I am watching TV with a censored writer, and Chris's ad comes
on, where he crawls through broken glass in a dark alley. The writer asked
how he got that on TV. He bought the time.
Laurie Anderson will write to
Chris that it's the bullet, not the hole--with the IRS it's the space, not
the content, and theirs is the opinion that counts today. Monroe Price
wears a suit, shows the auditor my mail on the cover of Art In America and
calls me Mister. That accomplishes in minutes what I haven't been able to
do in years. I suggest that art magazines publish one issue per year with
nothing but artists' names printed for tax purposes. Someone has thrown a
rock through Dudley's shrine. A fragment of the letter Y is surfing on a
page of Ps torn from the LA phone book. All my work is pro bono.You
change your mind and replace it with another. The process is slower than
usual and more painful. I am also here to sit on a panel and hire a
prostitute. Educated artists come to this convention to get fucked. At a
cocktail party the rehearsed hooker plays a graduate student looking for a
job. She accompanies an art department chairman to his suite for an
interview. This man has put a virus on my name. During the interview the
hooker whispers my name in his ear. Allan Kaprow is our host and
moderator. Judy Chicago tells me that men have stopped reading since she
wrote her book. Bruce Nauman warns me that if I wear the shoes I'm wearing
to Nudie's, Nudie will break my ankles. An autographed glossy of Gary
Cooper hangs on Bruce's living room wall. He is a High Noon kind of
artist. We burn our plates in the fireplace.