Memory

Seeing Elizabeth Peyton's painting of Kurt Cobain reminded me of my early 20s. Which in turn reminded me of REM, since I listened to a lot of REM those days, and their first EP, "Chronic Town":




The first song on that album was the haunting "Wolves, Lower," which reminded me of this photo from last month:



Taken at Cai Guo Qiang's exhibit at the Guggenheim. I really wanted to like Cai's work, but this turned out to be the only thing I liked. 

My favorite song from Chronic Town was "Gardening at Night." It would've been a great soundtrack for a particular evening Colleen & I spent last summer in the Mexican town of Palenque waiting for an overnight bus. Palenque -- the town, not the eponymous Mayan ruins nearby -- was such a dump that it became interesting. Here is one from that evening:



Speaking of eponymous, someone recently asked me what this word meant.  Of course, I only knew the answer because of "Eponymous," the REM compilation album. Anyway, I thought Eponymous would also be a good title for the following photo from a few weeks ago:



I should've asked her to send the photo she took to me; art occurs in a state of grace, they say.