angle hour

Dear Chris,

I can never write Dear Chris without thinking of Berrigan's sonnets.

It's 5am. The true witching hour. Or maybe the angel hour.  I just woke from a dream. I was setting up an office space with my friend Brian (you might vaguely remember him from the wedding) and you had sent over a large artwork (6' by 6') as a gift for the office. I was horrified to find that the frame was broken when some janitor tried to jam it into a closet. The canvas could possibly be saved I thought, but I was afraid to tell you about it, and was wondering how I was going to do it.

I can't remember what the piece looked like.

Then I walked back into the actual office and Brian was sitting behind a desk. He told me you had sent some more pieces to choose from. There were 5 large works.

The first was a drab Baconian painting of two girls in a hot tub. One of the girls had her back to the viewer. She was sitting close to the other girl who was facing forward. The second girl had her eyes closed with an expression of pain, or maybe pleasure, pleasurepain, on her face. What was happening was mysterious. There was the feeling that something was going on under the water. It was sexy and emotional and slightly disturbing. Beautiful.

On the second piece you had somehow transferred a GIF to the canvas. The moving image was of a girl being pulled away at a party from several of her girlfriends. She had that look of both reluctance and willingness, a laughing, embarrassed, tipsy look that said, sorry, I guess I have to go over here now.  The girl was played by Alicia Silverstone. (Wow, I thought, Chris is working with bigtime actresses now.)

 

The third piece was framed behind a screen door. It was just a single word, perfectly placed. After waking I tried to remember the word, but couldn't recall it. My waking-up mind wanted it to be "forge." But no, that wasn't it.

The fourth piece was a wash of grays.

Suddenly you were there in the room and I said, "I didn't know you painted" and you just nodded.

The fifth piece was an explosion of overlapping particolored pinwheels. In each little sliver of pinwheel was a handwritten word in an 80's faux computer font. It was dazzling and I would have liked to have spent hours with it.

I woke up. 

Sorry it's been awhile since I have written. I was hurt when I asked for help with the review of my friend's show and you didn't respond. That was the straw anyway, on top of a chain of other things that I've forgotten about now.  It's all fine now. I regret letting so much time pass before reaching out.  But I didn't have much to report anyway.

Life is good. I've been in focused dad mode.

I've written plenty over the last few years, but it mostly goes unread. Hopefully I'll manage to get some of it out there into the world, but I'm not so good at that part. The book for Anselm is finished. Long story, but should be coming out in the fall. We'll see. Threw a reading series with my friend Tyler Burba that you would have loved. I'll tell you all about it sometime.

How are you?