There's a marvelous conversation between artists Marina Abramovic and Laurie Anderson in the latest issue of Modern Painters [March 2010]. Abramovic and Anderson discuss, among many things, the topic of "selling out" or "crossing over" into the mainstream.

From the article:

Marina Abramovic: Talking about the crossing over, I was part of Sex and the City [in episode 86, an artist displays herself in a gallery without food or water, as in Marina’s The House with the Ocean View] — did you ever see that?

Laurie Anderson: No.

Marina Abramovic: I was in India, and Sean [Kelly, the gallerist] called me and said, "They want you to be a part of a Sex and the City episode." I had no idea what Sex and the City was. I said I’m not going to do it, but if they wanted to use [my] art, they would have to pay me for the rights. So they paid for the rights. It’s so funny how they portrayed me, sitting like a witch, black under the eyes, and then Baryshnikov defending me. It’s the worst. But it was the first time that a woman selling vegetables on the corner, who never said a word to me or gave me a hello, starts saying, "Oh, would you like some strawberries? They’re fresh. You don’t need to pay, just take them." I really felt what the power of the masses means. Amazing. Free strawberries, but also hello.

I find this story fascinating since, believe it or not, that Sex and the City episode was my first exposure to Abramovic's work. It's one of the singular scenes from that show that has stayed with me after all these years.

Abramovic's "crossing over" via mainstream media -- "the power of the masses" -- revealed to me a world of fascinating and groundbreaking art by this innovative artist that I, otherwise, would not have found out about for years to come, if ever. I'll take it.

I wandered into a bar in the Malasaña neighborhood one raucous Friday night the last time I was in Madrid.

As I sat at the bar and enjoyed my beer I couldn't help but notice a very loud crowd of 20-something Madrileños at the back of the bar singing along to music videos and classic commercials playing on a giant flat screen television. Only I couldn't recall any of the songs, didn't recognize any of the singers, and couldn't sing along to the jingles of any of the commercials -- unlike that young crew in the back of the bar.

The longer I watched them carry on -- and they were very entertaining to watch -- I started to realize that they have a whole different history, a whole different set of memories, that I or most of the people I know do. The music, the jingles, the commercials, the camaraderie, the cultural history -- it belonged to them, los españoles, and not the American at the bar.

From my Madrid journal:

Whole different lives are lived here. Different histories, different memories, different ways of being and living. It amazes me. We're so self-centered as Americans, thinking our experiences define how the world should be. It isn't until you go somewhere else that you realize that it ain't all about us.

I see Madrileños and the way they are, see the things they do and how they do them. I'll pick one, my tender here at Café Oliver for instance, and think about where she's been and how she got here. What her history is, what her memories are. Who loves her, who she loves. What does she do when she gets off work? Does she have a live-in, is she married, or alone? How does she fight with her lover? What does she look like when she cries? What does she look like when she has sex? How does her body move when she's with her lover, that person bringing her to ecstasy? How does she laugh? What makes her smile?

All of this and more comes to mind from a simple "hola" and the pour of a beer.

The more I travel and meet people who aren't like me, the bigger and richer it makes my world. I want to know all about how other people (non-Americans) live their lives and see the world. I want to know what their histories are, what matters to them, and how they find and pursue their passions.

Twitter and Facebook have made this pursuit much easier. I have several followers and "friends" on these social networks that are from Spain, Mexico, and other places where our only connection is that we share a similar language and, maybe, a cultural interest. That's the starting point, though, and there has to be a starting point.

I can't wait to see where my travels, both virtual and physical, take me and what they'll continue to reveal and teach me -- hell, all of us -- about the world beyond our borders. Hell, I might even learn a few new tunes and jingles.

Steve Earle on getting loaded to create something:

The idea that numbing yourself out and preventing yourself from feeling what you should feel and then thinking that you're going to translate that into a piece of art that's worth anything -- that is so flawed. It's cheating. You're writing about feelings and not really feeling them.

[From the book Moments of Clarity by Christopher Kennedy Lawford.]

If all girls had mouths
like yours I'd be done for.

from the poem Elegy Scale by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

How could that pair of lines not bring a sly smile to your face?

That's what happens after I read that poem -- hell, any poem -- from Calvocoressi's collection Apocalyptic Swing. I'm either smiling at a clever phrase, reveling in her choice of words, or utterly seduced by the story the lines of verse have whispered into my ear.

This is the best, most stirring collection of poems on boxing, jazz, religion, small towns, and big cities that I've read in a long time.

Check it:

Epistle From Her Daughter
           Yet to Be Consummated Back East

Love, you'll stick your finger into
anything. Sweet cream, valve oil, the mouth

of every damn baby that gargles.
You're insatiable, and that

city will screw you within an inch
of your life. Leave before the sun goes

down, before the cars start cruising
from Sunset to the canyons

and someone writes a song that goes
something like The city is burning

as the city startles and burns.
I've got no chance in the face of all

that starlight. Those boys on the beach?
All muscle and grass and nothing

but time. Come back. Pack your cheap bag
and get your ass on that bus.

Oh yeah. More, please.

Don't you know we're living in stolen moments
You steal enough it feels like we're stopping time
These days are gold we're living in stolen moments
Just grab hold and feel these days are yours and mine

John Hiatt, Stolen Moments

As soon as I saw this image I thought, "Stephen Shore."

Simon Rich's Free-Range Chickens is a collection of funny short takes on life and the bizarre situations many of us find ourselves in. Only rich makes them a little more bizarre. Many of these takes could be skits on Saturday Night Live, where Rich is a writer. Like current SNL skits, though, some are hilarious while others are more "ha" or not so funny.

Here's one of the really good ones from the section If adults were subjected to the same indignities as children:

GARAGE

ALBERT ROSENBLATT: Can I drive your car? I'll give it back when I'm done.
MRS. HERSON: I'm sorry....do I know you?
ALBERT ROSENBLATT: No, but we're the same age and we go to the same garage.
MRS. HERSON: No offense, sir, but I really don't feel comfortable lending you my car. I mean, it's by far my most important possession.
PARKING ATTENDANT: Mrs. Herson! I'm surprised at you. What did we learn about sharing?
MRS. HERSON: You're right...I'm sorry. Take my Mercedes.

The section on God is really good, too. Not for the easily offended, though.

El barrio Chueca en Madrid, cuatro de la mañana, Mayo 2009.

My three-year-old daughter Sophia recently studied George Washington in her preschool class, what with President's Day and Washington's birthday during this month and all.

We got a real kick out of this coloring assignment she completed. Blue hair, orange rouge, and red lipstick. Makes us look at old George in a whole new way.

My friend Maud recommended this book to me. Rupert Thomson is one of her favorite authors and she sold me when, in her email to me about the book, she wrote that his books are "incredibly propulsive" and that The Book of Revelation, in particular, is "pretty fucked-up!"

Sold.

From the novel:

And so it came, the day of his mutilation.
     He was lying on the floor, as usual, when the door opened and the women filed in, one by one. All three of them were wearing red hoods over their heads. All three of them were naked. They looked like the cardinals of some arcane or sacrilegious church. The hairs lifted on his arms. There had been a change in the women. He could feel it. It was as if, in stripping themselves of their clothes, they had removed all decency, all inhibition. As if, naked, they might be capable of truly monstrous things.

I couldn't put The Book of Revelation down. Just a warning, though: it's not for the squeamish.