FRUITS OF OUR LABOR
Cy Twombly, bar conversations and late night notifications
SHE THINKS SHE MISSED THE TRAIN TO MARS
This week has been calm. I’m feeling motivated but hoping this lasts longer than a little while. In the words of the great Yogi Berra,
You can observe a lot by watching.
Happy Leo season, my birthday is next month.
NOSTALGIA IS LIKE A KNIFE, UNFORGIVING AND UNRELENTING
The time is 1:28 a.m. on a Friday. I’m quite drunk, getting home from the bar after work, and I’m scrolling on my phone in the comfort of my bed. Suddenly, a notification pops up on my phone. Grailed says a pair of Jil Sander pants I’ve been watching since the COVID lockdown era, have been discounted further. I feel a wave of relief washes over me knowing that I could purchase them at any moment, but I don’t. It’s a stark reminder of the person I once was, as well as the person I hope to be someday—a contentious relationship not only between the future and the past but also with the present, constantly clashing and always in flux. It’s also interesting that someone continues to discount a pair of pants every two weeks for 5 years. We live such different lives but are united by a pair of pants no one wants. I lie calmly as I drift into a drunken stupor, a spirit content in the now.
UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER OF THE FAKE AND PHONY
As my jihad against bars and bartenders of the valley continues, I will list my preferred Manhattan recipe below.
2 ounces of barrel-strength Michter’s Rye
1 ounce of Carpano Antica
2 dashes of Angostura bitters
Build in a mixing glass, putting your least expensive ingredients in first. Fill with a generous amount of ice and stir for 45 revolutions.1 Strain into a chilled Nick and Nora coupe and garnish with a Luxardo cherry at the bottom of the glass.
I reach for Carpano Antica often when I’m behind the bar, as it’s of great taste and quality, but it needs a bold rye to complement its sweetness. I find barrel-strength rye does the trick, and I happen to prefer Michter’s.2
Under no circumstances should a bartender ever shake a Manhattan, or serve it over ice.
LOOKING DOWN THE BARREL OF A GUN
A late-night bar conversation turned serious and political last night. We bounced from topic to topic at a rapid pace but talked mainly about Venezuela. It brought me back to a lecture by Micheal Parenti on how America and its allies armed their foreign policy positions to wage a proxy war that would topple the country of Yugoslavia. The situations aren’t 1:1 but are largely similar, as The United States is no stranger to this style of warfare. The lecture is also a book that I’ve been lending to friends who express interest in geopolitics. How could you not be interested in our current political climate? If you have an interest, please watch it in full and pause to take notes.
CALM UNDER DEATH AND DESTRUCTION, REBIRTH OF THE SELF
Cy Twombly was a Black Mountain College alumni, where he studied with Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Ben Shahn, and met John Cage. The poet and rector of the college, Charles Olson, also had a significant influence on him. He’s truly the prodigal son of the abstract expressionist generation but has been overshadowed by his contemporaries Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Rauschenberg would breathe life into existing imagery and synthesize it into something new whereas Johns was simpler but more cerebral in his approach of repurposing existing imagery. Both were pivotal for conceptual art and they helped set the stage for future generations of artists. Twombly split the difference between his friends. His work was more primitive, less focused on existing imagery, and more concerned with emotion – direct to the point mark making.
Twombly's canvases are frequently dominated by dynamic, large-scale gestures that appear both chaotic and deliberate. His use of color is both vibrant and subdued. His style often seems to contradict itself, but the result is always a nuanced composition. This could be interpreted as a reflection of his own life, which was riddled with traditional marital expectations and societal pressures, his art could be interpreted as the physical manifestation of these forces. Twombly’s exploration of the intersection between drawing and painting is evident throughout his life due to the calligraphic quality left on the canvases. In some cases, the underlayer would be left to shine through the finished work. It conveys a sense of intentionality, movement, and rhythm. Through this distinctive approach, Twombly challenged conventional notions of artistic order, leaving an enduring impact on the trajectory of contemporary art.
Twombly's painting style is a unique fusion of gestural abstraction with an innate sense of poetic spontaneity—a mixture of fluid, expressive brushstrokes and what seemingly looks like scribbles at times. Twombly's work often conveys a sense of immediacy and raw emotion, drawing inspiration from other members of the New York School and evolving into a primitive style of painting influenced by the tribal art of Africa. He created a visual language that set him apart from his contemporaries and transcended the traditional boundaries of art.
Twombly may be the most palpably content painter in the American canon. This is a strange claim to make about someone whose work is full of death and destruction, but, because he tends to think in centuries, the destruction feels innocent in its universal sweep, gentle in its hints of renewal.
Jackson Arn, New Yorker 2013
SHES OUTBACK COUNTING STARS
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This number seems specific but is important because there is a razor-thin line between under and over-diluting a stirred cocktail and it’s commonly agreed that 45-50 is most correct if the cocktail is being served neat, or ‘up’. You’ll stir for 30-35 for cocktails being served over ice such as an Old Fashioned.
Barrel strength is a designation for whiskey with a proof over 101 or 51% ABV due to it being distilled and aged directly in the cask at the distillery.