ARTSTAR

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PJM: Is that the last box, Milo?

MILO: No, but close enough. I’ll toss the rest on top. Let’s take a break and have a cuppa.

PJM: Sounds good.

PJM: So, what’ll you do?

MILO: Same as last time. Head to the mountains.

PJM: Any sage advice?

MILO: Zeelio was right, when he said, “Remember poetry.” Even in wartime, the humanity of the fighter must be spared. I once believed that the empty vessel, the void container, was the perfect form. While I think that may be so for a young man, I no longer adhere to that visualization as an elder.

PJM: What are the parameters now?

MILO: If there is any hope at all to avoid cataclysm, it will take shape as an examination of arrogance and artificiality, and the concept of property, but you know this already.

PJM: The focal areas will be the electric grid, the concentration of immense destructive force at the point of the individual, the security of the compound, and the interoperability of systems.

MILO: In other words, your predictions are proving accurate.

PJM: Corporate-generated information is now completely untrustworthy. The duly elected democratic government, of, by and for the people has been eradicated. The availability of sustainable food and water sources for the current human population has been requisitioned. It is only a matter of time at this point.

MILO: What of art?

PJM: I suppose art will survive, just as humanity will - in some unpredictable iteration.

MILO: Do you feel up to reflecting on the sequence or precursor to the status quo?

PJM: Not really. It’s survival time. We must think of the women and children. We can leave vengeance and justice to the young and hardy headbangers. The world can hardly imagine their capacities for reckoning. The best among them are only waiting for the permission of God, a trusted leader, or maybe the right combination of song lyrics, meth and firepower. Or the right camera.

MILO: Cormac’s Blood Meridian, a vision of flames and dancing marauders, Goya and Auschwitz, a butcher’s paradise, at least for a short while.

PJM: Zeelio wondered aloud when last I saw him whether Haiti might be a final warning. Me, I spent yesterday evening switching dimensionally from painting my most articulate formal piece ever, to The Cruise and Speed Levitch’s beautiful musings, and the NFL Conference Championships, to Lula’s chile, soup and cookies, and so on.

MILO: Obviously, you didn’t travel to LA for the art fair.

PJM: No. The selection of galleries was a third smaller than last year’s. More at issue were the continuing observances of blood protocols. My engagements will be limited for another set of seasons, and all to the better. Between now and 2011/-2, we have much to do. I only pray the moorings hold.

MILO: Still, I wish we could have discussed more the new topologies of speech and artificial speech, art and artificial art, persons and artificial people. I very much would have loved for our collective to have delved more thoroughly into the burgeoning fracture of property-ness.

PJM: The land will shrug off the chains binding it, just as Rudy said she would. Great suffering will attend the transitional phase. Zeelio’s Haiti assertion seems correct, given the horrible history of that people, in the aftermath of their shedding the coils of slavery. As Speed suggested in his post-9/11 commentary, an opportunity for considered change and even directional, sustainable growth - the abandonment of the thrusting tower of monetary power - is yet attainable. At least for a moment longer.

MILO: I love Timothy’s multiple-layered Flower discourse, as captured in those moving images.

PJM: Jeffrey Deitch will get to LA in time for the earthquake. As for MoCA…

MILO: …Eli Broad…

PJM: …The art business…

MILO: What will we care about these things, as we hunt for the evening meal, among the craggy stones and in the dry stream beds?

PJM: If we are wrong, more’s the better!

MILO: We’ll be fools growing fat in the desert with our friends and lovers, at home again and hardy.

PJM: We’ll be making children, like there’s no tomorrow, and art as though yesterday is gone!

MILO: Our songs will echo in the ravines, until nothing is heard anymore. I’ll paint your face blue.

PJM: I’ll paint yours red, and we’ll pretend we’re tracking the last soda on the planet, on our way to Crawford.

[The End]