Saturday, December 8, 2012

Watch Where You're Going, Idiot

But it doesn’t matter. Because through this exercise I learn that people don’t pay attention. Not to what you say or even look like. Highlighted most astonishingly by the final woman to enter. She lights up when she sees me, “You make me smile every day!” This woman owns a large photo of Bert painted silver. Every day, she looks at this photo of Bert Rodriguez, not me—basically naked, mind you—and smiles. And now she is looking at me—not Bert—and smiling.

[...]

When I posed the obvious questions, Bert was ever laconic, shrugging off my queries with casual statements like, “I just did it to do it,” and, “Art doesn’t have to be about anything.” He was either a genius or a moron.
You decide. No, he's got it.
We board the monstrosity that is Celebrity Reflection and I at long last take in a cruise ship. It’s exactly a Vegas hotel, down to the nauseatingly busy carpets. I’m told the ship holds millions of dollars in priceless art. Truly, I’m told “millions of dollars of priceless art.” But the highlight of the tour is seeing Bert’s piece—my piece—Reflection. It’s a living tree suspended in midair with a metal sculpture of a tree upside down beneath it—its reflection, you see. “I just sketched something up and then some German guys made it with the ship.” Bert’s a fucking genius.