Our mandatory minimum sentence of frost and wind is over. Time to revisit the places we couldn’t until now. One of my very favorite reflection spots is the café at the rooftop of the Met. Beer in hand, sunglasses and my most bohemian shirt, weaving the nets of the future. The green canopy and cacophony of buildings serve as blinds narrowing my thoughts. Chaos becomes order. I get the feeling I am wearing my favorite shoes. (Oh, I am.) In the first quarter of an hour I have planned the rest of the year, building steadily on a quest for immortality.
All is well with the world. Plus I am standing right on top of Art’s Politburo Standing Committee (literally) holding a beer. Fancy-free like a joker, posing a systematic risk to the art world. Because I know exactly what is going on beneath my feet. The fate of art is being typed in computers by non-decision takers following orders by investment bankers. I would rather be up here. Perhaps if I carefully balance a brick on my head and not move for thirty minutes people will start taking pictures of me. It’s all about pictures around me. Proof, evidence of the past, killing the present.
I feel like an artist whose subject matter is the art world itself. I am penciling down ideas for this article. The city from here looks like a masterfully arranged dish in a fancy restaurant by a chef, a charlatan, a drunken god. The fourth man necessary to compound a salad is a mad man to mix it, bringing the whole of life into the focus of the plate. Well! This is the sort of thoughts that this place induces in me. We all have one I presume, a rooftop, a basement, a garden, a couch, a mall. When we leave we are ready (at least for a minute) to take over the world. Walking away, every foot in time. Bon voyage!
