Okay while the legend goes that nero fiddled while rome burned, the truth will never be completely known. I just like the analogy of someone who indulges in artistic and cultural endeavors while all around him infrastructure and practical things collapse. I feel like that person. Currently the closing/relocation/downsizing of two businesses has had an impact on my life. I feel a bit silly/selfish/shallow thinking of it in such terms but both of these businesses were my main hubs for internet access. First, the business that I rent my studio from is no more. For the last 18 months I have been occupying a modest warehouse that I renovated the summer of 2007. In the front of the building was the ladyfingers bakery and in the back was me. This situation worked well, rarely was i making too much noise for them when they were open and rarely did they bother me when i was working, they even had wireless internet, which i had actually quite using back in august of 2008, determining that not only did i need a windowless space to work in, but having no internet in the studio was the right choice for me. But knowing it was available when i needed it definitely helped if i wanted to update the website or draft a writing or idea when i was right in the middle of the process of creation. the second lost internet access has been the closing of the rutledge coffee and cream. I have known about the closing for over a week and still have not made alternate plans. we have shared a wall with the rutledge coffee and cream for about a year now, so we easily latched onto their wireless signal. In the past month or so his router has been spotty and he had swore up and down that he ordered a new one, but when he never fixed the problem we probably should have gotten the hint that he was closing down. When he finally told me, it came as no surprise. So now I have gone back to old techniques of internet access, namely leaving the house and going to a coffee shop to conduct all my internet related activities, this isn't all bad and definitely gives me some ideas for how to expand my work and my understanding of the coffee shop and particularly the current laptop farms of today, which i am now an overly active part of. On some level being forced to compute in public is a good thing. the previously private and anti-social activity of working on ones computer has become a public event shared by many. But the real reason i feel like nero fiddling is that when I have gone to the studio or worked on site for the last 4 years i have listened religiously to npr/pri radio. In fact it made my art feel less disconnected from the outside world since i listened intently to the world unfolding. Lately it has been difficult not to put down my tools and stare at the radio in disbelief, especially when the business closings are hitting so close to home and the news gets darker. I have no problem finding continued beauty and inspiration in the detritus of consumer culture that has sustained my art thus far, but i want less and less to know what is going on outside of the confines of the studio, gallery space, or dumpster i am working in. To this end I have been listening repeatedly to girl talk's upbeat albums. Not only is girl talk the perfect background noise for work, but the mixes are like a game of name that tune that flies by at 100 miles an hour. The irony of my substitution of girl talk for npr, is that i learned about girl talk from a review on npr, so as soon as i burn out girl talk i will have to get back to listening exclusively to npr in hopes of finding new musical inspiration.
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