Art unopened before me tonight, in the dark alley in Soma, a dark alley in the gods' liquid bliss. Soma, the nectar, and the acronym, and within, the alley of surprise, as I neared Pigman gallery for the announded art opening. That gallery has become a wide open heart of beating pulsation, opening after opening. This was to be my first opening to lay before your eyes that become your ears. Hearing my red headed voice through your eyes, you would have flocked to admire, and buy the works of talent. Instead, as I turned the corner that led to the gallery, The Pigman himself walked past me, eyes down, with no propriatory air wafting about him at all.
His hair waved around his ears in the breeze of his walk, and I turned around to walk with him, away from the gallery.
"What are you doing?"
I had to ask. Why was he not at his show? It was to be his own works at his own gallery, his big night.
"Didn't you get my email?" No, I hadn't, including a group email alert said he'd sent out, that somehow missed me.
"I just got off work. I haven't even been by the gallery. Anyone who thinks we're going to have a show in January is mental. Almost no galleries have shows in January. They just let it go. I'm rethinking this whole gallery business, anyway. Sorry, I'd buy you a beer but i'm beat. I've been doing design work since 7 this morning. I'm making good money doing that.You had a gallery, you know how much good that is for making money. Did you ever sell anything?
"Yes..."
""I've studied the galleries on Geary. They have a fantastic show tonight. And a business plan. People tell me it's that they have money. I don't want to just keep thinking that." I had never heard him say anything good about the Geary galleries like he did that night. Before, he'd said fuck them, who need's em. His hoisterous hand gestures showed his gallery had the real art show, more raw, tough, pulsing the boundaries. The alternative, not the commercial.
" People ask me, what, aren't you doing your show? And I tell them, what, are you crazy? Do you think I was at the gallery over Christmas? " He is really such a lovable cuss. He's my buddy, and I hear him. Our step is fast.
I am supposed to do a show there in the spring. A show called "Tales from the Secret Rooms." Now, the future is around a bend.
"I can't do it all. I'm making money doing something else, for gosh sakes. And you can't depend on interns. But I'm not giving up! I'm still going! I don't want to sell the art they sell. I want to show art like yours, and i'm meeing great people doing this." And the chance arose out of the alley, for someone reading this to be involved in a gallery if you so wish, where the alternative art scene happens in an excellent way, a professional, startling, brilliant way. The shows can remain imprinted on your mind, and become part of the dream ethers of San Francisco.
When I got to the steps leading to the underground, we hugged goodbye.
The train had cast a silent mode on its inhabitants. A young man stood in the corner, facing the riders. His wool cap was pulled tightly over his head, and his clothes meant to blend in, but intense muscles bound his face in emotion and a vision of this thoughts in front of his face, as he stared at it, his expression always remaining just as intense, the variations in his expressions subtleties each worthy of a DeNiro. He was handsome, yet hidden beneath the cap. I saw his face reflected in the glass, and was he looking at me? It was hard to tell, but when I saw his reflection, he looked down. I'd stare away, outside the window, or look at the all the others finding reflections to look through. I saw two others see each other in reflections, and look away. I looked a different direction, and thought, and then, refocusing my eyes, I realized I was looking through another reflection of him. As I noticed him, he seemed to be looking at me, and then suddenly looked down at the ground. Every time I looked at him, his face was down, down, hiding from the bus it seemed. I realized once again another reflection of him, at another angle, and he looked down, pulling his cap more strenuously over his face. All our reflections on the train were moving past each other, in and out of one another, and there would go a hand of one person through the head of another. Then the real person would go through both of them, and the train would turn, making the reflections curve in upon themselves in a quantum party. Everyone on the train was looking down. Reflections like parrallel world moved through them, surprising them with eyes looking at them, coming around the curve. Hands, eyes, collar bones, reading, writing, listening to music, all being so separate, yet finding themselves strung through each other anyway, and there was nothing they could do about it.
Noticing Black Oat Books, www.BlackOakBooks.com, at 630 Irving Street, the Sunset's treasure, I hopped off the train. My appetite was up for art. I found it. An excellent store for finding something different. It was almost as if the staff were reading my mind, but maybe we catching the book in my hand out of the corner of their eyes. As I picked up a Paul Auster book, I heard them talking about Auster. They have new, used and old books, and in the used art section, I gleefully discovered to my astonishment, Michiko Kon's photography, a black and white Aperture Book. I had been looking at the shelf, thinking, what art book could i find that I would want to see as much as the one I'm working on myself, called From the Secret Rooms, to accompany the art show, surreal images created by putting together combinations of --things and photographing and reworking them? But this book, this surreal combination of---things, was just as exciting to see. I looked at the essay in the back of the book, about her work, and it was called "In the Secret Room." Amazing. Everyday objects, predominantly fish, became other, in a dreamlike astonishment. Yes, I would support a local store, and I would buy art. Entering the Secret Room.
Fish became silver, and black nodes of genius. The shining surfaces arising out of the darkness became objects worthy of waking dreams. "The sardines ate my soup," the waiter cried, dying into the applesauce and stringing himself along into a kind, gentle vegetable.
"However can we go about recovering our meal? "
"Put the sardines on your hat, my lady, string it up to a tree filled with baby's breath and fish heads, and then, you will float above all your pain."
"My hunger too?"
"Your hunger too. But look inside of this box of dreams. It opens into another space where there you are sitting at a table made of eels and cuttlefish, and you are hungry no more. You are eaten instead, by a mouth that includes a flower, a fork and spoon, an eye. Now, how do you feel?"
Walking on 9th avenue, between Irving and Judah, I passed by a window, my mind being caught up in reflection, and through that came a yong woman's face I recognized. It was Cafe Gratitude, click here for Cafe Gratitide. That is one of the absolute best restaurants in San Francisco, and it serves raw, vegan, organic, living food in a metaphyisical setting, with huge prints inspiring art, with staff who take the time to bond with me in great euphoric bursts when I go in. I went in through the open door, to report back to her about my dream. We hugged, and she was wearing a beautiful flower in her long dark hair. "I just had to come in and tell you what happened about my dream with Louie!:I had told her and two other people working there about my dream, last time I was there, with a friend, local artistic legend, Louie Lights. http://www.lightnwire.com/about_us3.htm. I had dreamed of being a housemate, in his flat, and then, that night, we ate there, where Louie had reminisced that the Cacophony Society had begun long ago. http://cacophony.org The Cacophony Society is an exciting group of people who create events that sqeeze the dreams out of reality and play with them like cats batting around a catnip toy.
And we went to his house to watch a movie from "Le Video. www.LeVIdeo.com" across the street. What a haven for alternative videos. They have more movies from France than from other foreign countries, but they have a recommendable selection of avant-garde, artistic, beautiful films, great for folks who look outside of the mainstream vision of reality. And as I was walked into his flat, the walls and shelves looked at me. It was eerie. It was just like my dream of his place. Just like it, and he had told me nothing about it. He showed me one of his ingenius light sculptures, and I looked into it, and it opened up a space on the other side of his wall that didn't exist. And that was where I had been living in the dream, in that newly opened up optical illusion space.
:"That's just great your dream was the same as that space." the waitress said. "We should do some dream experiments together."
" We can see if we can share a dream, or both dream at the same time and compare notes, interpretting them in a way we plan out first..." Yes, San Francisco is the land where dreams and reflections and art and time and space call all move past each other, in and out, and there are many here who celebrate it, understand the quantum interelationship of us all. The mainstream, in which people carefully guard their boundaries of self, wrap them up in bundles, is one reflection that moves through us all, and we can put our hand through that illusion and open the door.
by Tantra Bensko
www.freewebs.com/tantrabensko
