gemini begins
on the train and in the studio… thoughts take shape — in space that is one and corners that take shape… gliding-by simply: in rigid form that is sleep, wake, walk, eat, work, sleep… and, “sell the shit out of art… “
text from: bluebeard by kurt vonnegut.
it was a postwar miracle that did me in. i had better explain to my young readers, if any, that the second world war had many of the promised characteristics of armageddon, a final war between good and evil, so that nothing would do but that it be followed by miracles. instant coffee was one. ddt was another. it was going to kill all the bugs, and almost did. nuclear energy was going to make electricity so cheap that it might not even be metered. it would also make another war unthinkable. talk about loaves and fishes! antibiotics would defeat all diseases. lazarus would never die: how was that for a scheme to make the son of god obsolete?
yes, and there were miraculous breakfast foods and would soon be helicopters for every family. there were miraculous new fibers which could be washed in cold water and need no ironing afterwards! talk about a war well worth fighting!during that war we had a word for extreme man-made disorder which was fubar , an acronym for “fucked up beyond all recognition.” well — the whole planet is now fubar with postwar miracles, but, back in the early 1960s, i was one of the first persons to be totally wrecked by one — an acrylic wall-paint whose colors, according to advertisements of the day, would “… outlive the smile on the ‘mona lisa.’”
the name of the paint was sateen dura-luxe. mona lisa is still smiling. and your local paint dealer, if he has been in the business any length of time, will laugh in your face if you ask for sateen dura-luxe.