Dumb-Quoted Again!
Egads! I have put my stinky foot into my big fat mouth again. No, that’s not it. My big fat mouth let my flabby lips flab away again. Again! And, as usual, it is my own undoing. Every time I start gabbing it up with the press, godluvem, I wind up saying something that seems completely casual, an innocent conclusion to the conversation. Just a comment, a throwaway, pleasant perfunctory. But no, the tape was still rolling, the journalist’s mind still probing for a simple sound bite, a sexy little quip for quotation. Oh bless their underpaid hearts. Just stop using the stupidest of the stupid things I say. Sheesh.
First, and this was like a year ago, so I only fret about it before I go to bed at night and then again at 4 a.m. when Annie has to get up to feed the baby, it was the 8 a.m. phone interview that was all about how Art of This operates and why it was showing a certain artist and how the project was a development in the young artist’s work. Yet somewhere in all this drowsy artspeak I let slip some irrelevant insignificance that this artist’s work was trendy and seemingly accessible for young collectors. Oh, and I am sure I said it loud and dumb, but how was it germane to the conversation? What did it have to do with the artist’s project? And why would that be the only line that made it into print? Art of This doesn’t even sell work (note to painters)!
Skip ahead to this afternoon during my daily perusal of the Internet, all of it, when I come across a preview for Angela Zammarelli’s February 9 exhibition at Art of This. It’s an excellent piece. Complete with background of both artist and gallery, the preview captures the spirit of Angela’s work as well as why it is a good fit at AOT. We, artist and gallery, really couldn’t ask for much more. But good old petersen’s (sic) gotta keep running at the gums, the dumbass. Concluding the excellent and much-appreciated article (please keep up the good work on the good work) is a punctuating piece of pitiful ‘I am a complete and utter nimrod.’ And again, I am quite sure the words were in fact expelled from my mouth, the words referring to Angela’s work being, ‘It’s pretty nuts,’ although it is quite possible and maybe even rather likely that the words may have been ‘It’s pretty fucking nuts,’ or simply ‘Fucking nuts.’ At this point, the concluding line might as well read, ‘Fuck, am I high.’ At least then a stingy Victorian editor may have given the line the ax.
The point of all this regretful, neurotic babbling is that despite the benefits of a working relationship with members of the Fourth Estate, I will inevitably leave a few loose threads blowing in the wind for a writer to use against me. And I would ask that they not do this anymore, or at the very least attempt to excise the unnecessary idiocy, but that might risk a reluctance to preview shows at Art of This, and that would bum me out. This would also greatly disappoint my mother, who really gets off on my looking like a monosyllabic dimwit in print. The lesson to be learned is that, strangely, this isn’t about just me, it is about the artists. And if a few poorly chosen phrases turn up in such a way as to make the artist look a little better and a whole lot smarter, well, then I guess I have done my job. Fucking nuts.