EVENING PRIMROSE Poetically speaking, growing up is mediocrity. – NED ROREM
Neither rosy nor prim, not cousin to the cowslip nor the extravagant fuchsia, I doubt anyone has ever picked one for show, though the woods must be fringed with their lemony effusions.
Sun blathers its baronial endorsement, but they refuse to join the ranks. Summer brings them in armfuls, yet, when the day is large, you won’t see them fluttering the length of the road.
They’ll wait until the world’s tucked in and the sky’s one ceaseless shimmer – then lift their saturated eyelids and blaze, blaze all night long for no one.
1990, L.A. The Gold Field. How can I deal with the Gold Field? I don’t quite know. But the Gold Field was there. Ross and I entered the Museum of Contemporary Art, and without knowing the work of Roni Horn we were blown away by the heroic, gentle and horizontal presence of this gift. There it was, in a white room, all by itself, it didn’t need company, it didn’t need anything. Sitting on the floor, ever so lightly. A new landscape, a possible horizon, a place of rest and absolute beauty. Waiting for the right viewer willing and needing to be moved to a place of the imagination. This piece is nothing more than a thin layer of gold. It is everything a good poem by Wallace Stevens is; precise, with no extra baggage, nothing extra. A poem that feels secure and dares to unravel itself, to become naked, to be enjoyed in a tactile manner, but beyond that, in an intellectual way too. Ross and I were lifted. That gesture was all we needed to rest, to think about the possibility of change. This showed the innate ability of an artist proposing to make this place a better place. How truly revolutionary. This work was needed. This was an undiscovered ocean for us. It was impossible, yet it was real, we saw this landscape. Like no other landscape. We felt it. We traveled together to countless sunsets. But where did this object come from? Who produced this piece that risked itself by being so fragile, just laying on the floor, no base, no plexiglass box on top of it. How come we didn’t know about her work before, how come we missed so much? Roni’s work has never been the darling of the establishment. Of course not. Some people dismiss Roni’s work as pure formalism, as if such purity were possible after years of knowing that the act of looking at an object, any object, is transfigured by gender, race, socio-economic class, and sexual orientation. We cannot blame them for the emptiness in which they live, for they cannot see the almost perfect emotions and solutions her objects and writings give us. A place to dream, to regain energy, to dare. Ross and I always talked about this work, how much it affected us. After that any sunset became “The Gold Field.” Roni had named something that had always been there. Now we saw it through her eyes, her imagination.
Roni Horn, Gold Field, 1980-82. 99.99% pure gold foil, annealed, 0.0008 x 49 x 60 inches.
Félix González-Torres, “1990: L.A., “The Gold Field” first appeared in the catalogue Roni Horn. Earths Grow Thick (Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, 1996). The text is reprinted with the kind permission of Roni Horn, the Wexner Centre for the Arts, and The Félix González-Torres Foundation.
Love is too young to know what conscience is; Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove: For, thou betraying me, I do betray My nobler part to my gross body’s treason; My soul doth tell my body that he may Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason; But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride, He is contented thy poor drudge to be, To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. No want of conscience hold it that I call Her ‘love’ for whose dear love I rise and fall.
Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; Both grace and faults are loved of more and less; Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort. As on the finger of a throned queen The basest jewel will be well esteem’d, So are those errors that in thee are seen To truths translated and for true things deem’d. How many lambs night the stern wolf betray, If like a lamb he could his looks translate! How many gazers mightst thou lead away, If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! But do not so; I love thee in such sort As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
The spring has many sounds: Roller skates grind the pavement to noisy dust. Birds chop the still air into small melodies. The wind forgets to be the weather for a time And whispers old advice for summer. The sea stretches itself And gently creaks and cracks its bones….
The spring has many silences: Buds are mysteriously unbound With a discreet significance, And buds say nothing.
There are things that even the wind will not betray. Earth puts her finger to her lips And muffles there her quiet, quick activity….
Do not wonder at me That I am hushed This April night beside you.
As usual, Death sweetly slips her arm in mine— & we take a deep breath from the eucalyptus breeze. We both worked honestly at our jobs: all day Death destroyed traffic with wailing ambulances while I killed hours & lines on eight-&-a-half by eleven inch pages. We’re fast friends by now, Death much older of course, but there’s no hierarchy between us: we’re both taking a break from it all, glad to watch waves collapse on rocks & pelicans dive-bomb fish. I try to be sensitive to Death’s guilt: that whole pandemic disaster she can no longer control. She’ll soon betray me too—like she will you. I know. But today the gulls are silver angels etching great cursive blessings in a perfect sky—so Death & I make believe we believe that, & amble on.
“… crônicas do feed on a certain amount of friction—strange incidents, uncomfortable interactions with strangers, conversations with cab drivers (Lispector has a couple of very good pieces on this topic). […] The crônica demands a certain capacity for boredom, for being open to fleeting, small scenes of the quotidian.”
Heterotopias, place that opens behind the surface, holds an over-there-ness, represent a “reservoir of imagination” (MF). Within the fold. A garden as a microcosmic world build out of the juxtaposition or arrangement of elements. Place with temporal shifts and/or fragments. A cruise ship. An airport.
