Folha de S Paulo 1992 (Hamburg)
Estadão – 1987
in Korea – ages and ages ago
Roaming with intent.
Let’s Say it All Started on the day I read sprayed on a wall in Holborn, London: ART is dead.
I was caught dead in my boots because – not only was art dead, I was too. But I was standing in a pair of Doctor Martens.
This entire thing begins quite a few years earlier in New York on Second Avenue and E 4th Street in the apartment (made into a makeshift loft) where my friend (mentor and boyfriend) Helio Oiticica lived.
Helio had displays of his homages to Cara de Cavalo (Box Bolide) there and – needless to say – his big thing in life was his “tropicalista” statement/ banner like statement:
SEJA MARGINAL – SEJA HEROI
“BE A CRIMINAL – BE A HERO”
Now, try to convert that into North American terms of the 21st Century. Where would we be?
Or, in Brazil, for that matter? And where would we be there?
Of course, it’s easier to start in Brazil.
Those people in charge of the government and the “overall mentality – the prevailing mentality” in Brazil are crooks and have subscribed heavily to the system of Helio’s foretelling clear crystal catchphrase.
They’re all thieves. All of them.
If you hate Washington DC, think again. Try Brasilia!!!
I looked at that wall in Holborn back in the early 1970s. I looked again last year. It almost never changed.
I looked at my feet. Christ! How they’ve changed! And HOW many pair of boots I’ve minced through, smashed and mowed. How many cars, how many shirts, how many everything! How many people!!!!
I’m writing this one day after Lou Reed died. I’ve emailed Lenny many times today and we went over memories of us and Philip and Laurie. All my values have changed so much so damn much!!!
The NSA is now a terrible thing – it’s now the ‘enemy within’ as Enoch Powell used to call it.
Spying is something everybody does and nobody wants to talk about it. Yet – those boots were made for walking and I’ve walked. I’ve been walking all my life as if I’ve been fleeing. From what?
Not sure. Maybe I’ve been fleeing from being a CRIMINAL – HERO (in the words of Helio) , fleeing from being dead on arrival (my strange birth at a hotel, the Gramercy Park), fleeing from the TRUTH (whatever that maybe), fleeing from the daily addictions and the daily panic of dying although being DEAD should, in principle, mean, that I’ve already been acquitted from having to die again and again.
But it doesn’t acquit me from having to live.
And living is roaming with intent. And roaming with intent means that Let’s Say it All Started on the day I read sprayed on a wall in Holborn, London: ART is dead.
Spray paint is not permanent. No paint ever is.
No paint ever is.
No painting ever is.
Gerald Thomas Oct 28, 2013
Gerald Thomas Blog 