Fuck the war.
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Twice in the past week I've been told that I need to get off my ass if I'm ever going to get anything done—get whatever it is I'm supposed to want, or grow old safely—both times by someone with an admitted willingness to get on their ass for the same reason.

I have respect for the casual cynicism of women. I grew up around it, but I know it too well for my own good. I have a long memory.
At the Armory show last month, I passed by the booth of a Parisian dealer who recognized me as the man who had made a fool of himself in her presence in Madrid the year before. I'd refused to use the introduction I had to her, gone in cold and left annoyed by her indifferent response, only as I left spitting out that I knew collectors of hers, who had bought two large pieces of mine in NY. Why I behaved this way, I don't know. But now she looked at me from a distance with the mixture of condescension and pity that a teenage girl will reserve for a boy who's missed his chance. The woman's in her 50's and that she would strike that pose with the casual manner of a 16-year-old and pull it off is some sort of a testament to the rightful victory of tradition over pure reason. I was an idiot.

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Killing time: Reviews.

I went to a dance performance Friday night. Never having seen anything by the Living Theater, I'd never imagined a work of choreography could succeed in making male bisexuality seem entirely unattractive. After all, they were dancers, right? Get me Paul Taylor.

Andrea Modica at Edwynn Houk. The narcissism of the pedophile. Worse than Sally Mann, who doesn't really bother me. And worse than Diane Arbus, who does.

Review of art reviewers: Every once in a while I have a fantasy that Vince Aletti, the photography critic of the village Voice, was killed by the same truck that bumped off Roland Barthes. Nostalgia and a momentary aphasia are the two most basic responses to any photograph. The only choice worth making is to go in the opposite direction, as much as possible (which let's face it, for photography, ain't much.) "He is dead, but he will never die." I spent 3 minutes with Camera Lucida before reading those words in the caption to a 19th C. photograph of a man about to be executed. I threw the book away in disgust.

Jeff Wall at Marian Goodman (opens next week.) His work has taught me things I would never have known without it, and there's not much else by anyone alive I can say that about. If you can understand why someone would hate Peter Greenaway and everything he stands for, intellectually, aesthetically, therefore politically, you'll get the point.