poetry
This was inspired by a comment thread here. My sentiments are not directly to that particular photographer… but more at the phenomenon of internet art culture in general. I’ve never understood people who make something beautiful, only to whore it for the most number of vapid comments and approvals they can.
There’s a fine line to walk, indeed– I can only hope my path keeps me beyond the flood (more than I tread through it anyway)
Thirst for applause
If thirst for applause has brought you here to make art, then don’t.
Stop.
Flea markets, internet forums, and the neon painted walls
of hipsters everywhere
are bored into Ikea furnished suicides by your kind.
If you cannot take your work,
hold it in your pocket more than an hour,
more than a minute,
longer than the time it took you to make it,
then don’t.
If thirst for applause has brought you here to make art,
learn how to honor the work, yourself, and the audience.
Do not disgrace yourself or the work,
dressing it up in frills, bright makeup, and bed sheet clearance signs.
Are you trying to sell lemonade on the corner of Times Square?
If you want to impress me by your ambition for applause,
then straddle my face with your wonderful cunt
and rub it, rub it, rub it
until the paparazzi set fire to us with flash bulbs.
But if you do not wish to do this,
which many men and women have told me they do not,
(for which I cannot blame them)
then learn to treat your work with respect—
and trust that time will take care of the rest;
That your audience will seek it out
and not visit it as some discarded carcass on the side of a road,
upon which flies and mosquitoes plant their nest,
and fabulous photographers flock to compliment art’s beautiful death.
