Objet d'art: this helicopter hangs, suspended in the MOMA in New York. It is a paradoxical installation, since helicopters are a weapon and a life saver in equal measure. It reminds me of Baudrillard's idea of knowing that the secret of philosophy is not to know oneself, or know where where one is going, but rather to go where the other is going. We chase each other's dreams. Wasn't it Pierre Bourdieu who said, if I speak only of myself who will follow me? Perhaps we need to understand both sides of all debates - and not just the newspaper/tabloid/political (always biased) idea of what the debates are? Andy Warhol said he wanted to be a machine (hence the helicopter image here) and he reduced/alleviated art to the process of reproduction until the image was saturated into strangeness, 'closer and closer to the nothingness of the object…' which is open to the idea that if we take the image, the identity, the celebrity and reproduce it over and over we take away the mystique, and so we can question the ideas behind it/him/her as art and performance. Hmm, I am not so sure. This has always seemed simple but remember those Marylyn Monroe pictures and Che Guevara, such an idea denies the process of seduction and desire and even Freud's uncanny, which is much more complex. Time for music, methinks. See the lonely boy, out on the weekend, trying to make it pay, was a great sentiment when I was 16, but I am thinking of the other - and this song does that - same era, I was still 16 and now I am growing into myself, though I hesitate to call myself 'old man' - btw, don't you just love this Martin guitar:
