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I gave up on politics years ago, I was a communist umpteen punk rock years ago, then an anarchist, now i am a miniature capitalist. Art is the only answer. Policy is the darkest alley and the deadest end.

I was talking to a friend here at the brewery art colony - the malaise here is palpable, many people are buying homes and the fantasy of having an art loft is petering out for this generation.

People want to believe in art but they put themselves too deep into the mix. Lightening hardly strikes on land and never twice, so the notion of being “important” or part of some “art history” is just narcissism. So people give up on art when their talents are not monstrously rewarded.

But there is that purity in art, that point on the chart that is opposite of self-consciousness. It is the truest truth, above all the religions and gods and myths and identities. Way above the politics and the business plans, the lectures, the academies and the college degrees.

But I realized a few years ago that they pretend to strive for purity and they really only strive for name-recognition. To mimic the industrial revolution by masturbating as manufacturer and then attempt to involve a distribution and retail outlet, a showroom, you see it is all product.

The academics with their non-profit web of lies are worse, trading their art for money not with collectors but in the form of salary with faceless bureaucrats pencil pushing art into a niche of illustrating convenient lies about the agenda that needs to be pushed.

But I can be happy, because just by looking around, there are many instances of meeting up with that purity of art, the greatest good, the moment of crisp living, the sex impulse the love instinct the motherfuckingodamnnedtohellandback ART.

Many many many years ago there was the Woman’s Building. It was at the center of the Los Angeles alternative art scene in the 1970s and early 80s (a time that, worldwide, will one day be recognized as easily eclipsing the 1960s as the cultural high water mark).

Tonight there was a cool art event happening at the Woman’s Building, some videos being played with a bunch of people sitting on the floor. There were art installations happening upstairs, a cool one with a trampoline that broadcasted delayed video of the jumper so that as they jumped in the air and came down, the image on the wall was of them jumping up. It was impossible for the trampoliner to get in synch.

So it was a kewl event but I noticed, from my old man perspective, some subtle differences about art events now from the, well, from the good old days. I went to a lot of events in the Women’s Building in the mid- 80s, it had passed its creative peak by then but was still looked upon as a center of activity.

Oh now, you kids, don’t be a-fearin that this oldtimer is gonna diminish your creative gatherings by postulating the magnitude of the inventions of his youth, no sir, no way no how. The art these days is superior by and large - if only because of the technology, artworks are delivered more coherently. The issue of presentation alone resolves so many of the issues that once held the alternative spaces hostage to the fate of a “good night” where everything “worked out” (numerous microphones, amplifiers, lighting, et cetera ad infinitum, all working in synch, all attached correctly, balanced well). A click of a self-contained video system today allows the magic to take place in a perfect setting.

What has diminished, though, is the people. Art events used to be scintillating parties. There was a drama and pulse to walking the halls of the upstairs art studios at the Woman’s Building, the Spring Street studios, the American hotel, and that pulse was the people. They smoked, drank, snorted coke, bummed cigarettes, ran anxiously toward the smell of burning marijuana, laughed with a hint of abandon and a pinch of terror. There was no networking, no slide packets, no resumes, no worrying about whether the fucking hiring committee faculty asswipes would be showing up. there were no careers and no anti-depressants, people smoked indoors and drank a bottled beer in five swigs. They talked of fantastic things too, about visions they had and the possibilities of things that now it can be said none of them (us) ever did. Nowadays the dry conversations center around the latest addition to one’s resume.

Well, your resume is pointless and the beer is not getting any colder, we are going to get nuked or macheted before smoking gives us cancer, and the art may be slick and well presented but nobody will see it when you doff your perch at some college in B.F. Inland Empire Valley re-tread student loan scam school. The madness has been drained and it has been sadly apparent to me lately, not just at this event, in fact, it was less here, but the whole contrast came to me because I used to bounce through the halls of the Woman’s Building and ingest the fire.

Do I sound like a cranky old man or am I just going to the wrong parties?

The new James Bond movie is okay. 007 doesn’t get a chance to go to any art galleries or write any reviews, appear on any panels or get a tenure track position teaching art theory - thus making his stay in a North Korean prison seem pretty easy. But there are cool bad guys and hot chicks, so kinda like the art world.

I got a 1965 Rambler, driving it is awesome but it is a bitch to park (no power steering) and the comforts of my Chrysler have spoiled me. But it is a cool car.

ME: What kind of movie would you like to see?
Date: You pick…
ME: (skimming the internet listings) Hey, there is a new James Bond movie…
Date: You like James Bond?
ME: (noncommital) Uh, yeah, what’s not to like…
Date: (long pause) You’re like the James Bond of art critics.
ME: (bewildered) Huh?
Date: Well, there’s the fat guy in Las Vegas (she was referring to Dave Hickey), and then there’s Peter Frank, who’s gonna think he is a debonair secret agent, and just look around, who else is there as an art critic that isn’t gay or repulsive?

I did the strangest thing last night… I went to bed at 9 p.m.

So I get up all refreshed and rested at 6:30 a.m., I am going to go have some cambodian espresso at the donut shop down the street (I will walk in and the woman will say “Two double one cup for the man.”)

Hit a few galleries in mid-city L.A. yesterday. The folks at Manny Silverman are pissed about the cheapshot review of their Robert Motherwell show by LA Times critictwit Christopher Knight.

Attacking Robert Motherwell in this era is like attacking a child in a wheelchair. Abstract Expressionism is so pase that it has almost slipped into obscurity. If it hadn’t been for the movie Pollock, things for the mid-century American splashers would be even worse.

So why the below the belt suckerpunch by the Times’ Mother hen, and why now? I think he must be working on a book of essays of 20th century art and needed an Ab-Exer to fill in the gap. Again - this is a school of painting whose credibility in the art world is deflating as we speak.

I liked the Motherwell show. I am going to go have some coffee and come home and write about it.

An artist who I have written positive things about took me out to dinner tonight. We ate at a nice place in Pasadena. I did not get into this for party invites and perks, but it is nice when someone is gracious. And i pigged out, desert and all.

On the way back there was a guy crossing at a light in front of us in Pasadena. It was the original drummer for Social Distortion, Derek O’Brien. I don’t know him personally, but it was a vision from the past. I saw them live 23 years ago, and many times since. It was weird, a merging of past and present.

Have gotten a lot of e-mail about the new issue of the magazine, many saying it looks ominous and sums up the state of things (internationally, economically) in the relation to the art world from the macro world. I gotta go to the bank in the next few days, but am on the weirdest sleep schedule of my life. I wonder if there will be banks after World War Three.. … …. …..

I went out to get the mail now that the sun has risen. The 2 a.m. meteor showers were a bust by the way. I got mail from Spain and England, a Spanish art magazine and the Tate Modern press release. This indicates that I have been at this address too long and people are able to find me. Maybe it is time to hit the road. Until I get a laptop, though I am here. And there is of course an upcoming Salerno show at the gallery. The letter form Spain had a very cool stamp with a motorcycle on it.

Here is my movie version of FRIDA. There is no nudity.

All time screw-up: I went to bed at 10:30 a.m. Monday morning wired from a cup of IHOP coffee i drank at 5 a.m.

Guess what time I got out of bed?

11:30 p.m.

Get it? 13 hours of sleep, interrupted by five phone calls, four answering machine messages, one call back and two trips to the bathroom. Never turned the light on once.

So the one call back was to Roland Reiss. I thought he was calling to thank me for what I wrote here a few days ago (comparing his painting favorably to Gerhard Richter’s). He called twice, so i phoned back. He was thankful about the review, but also asked if I wanted to give a talk about painting in Idyllwild this Summer. It pays very well and there are a lot of big names coming up to this Art Summer Camp type place (too tired to recall all of the names or even the name of the place) to give presentations to post-graduate artists. So I accepted and we chatted, me laying in the dark with the phone. Then i went back to sleep for nine hours.

So the moral of the story is: do nothing and you will succeed.