At my secret bar, the place I haven’t identified or mentioned to anyone, not even the person who just revealed every last one of her secret go-to places where nobody knows her or bothers her. Nice long conversation with the old friend. Good to have someone nice to talk to. Wandered around Astoria afterward, feeling a little more optimistic about the future than I did yesterday. There is a shop on 30th Avenue where a painter is doing his work where anyone passing by can see. This sounds like something you might have heard about in the East Village years ago, or in Williamsburg. Or maybe not. I don’t know, but if it happens in Astoria I get an immediate feeling that it comes from  derivative privilege, a monied attempt to emulate the energy and possibility of New York when it was realistic to live here as an artist. but then I ask myself: Why so sour? The painting-in-progress was awesome. The place where this painting was on display looked like a digital printing and lithograph place (I didn’t really notice what the business itself was) but whatever it was if it helps subsidize the work of a genuine artist in a way that the public can experience and follow through with then what’s the damn problem? I mean, i created this hypothetical problem with my knee-jerk negativity, but it’s a negativity that is not unique to me by an estimate. Hipsters are here! All is lost! Maybe there is an insincerity to things but when has that not been true? I got into a near fistfight with someone last week over Yoko Ono and her contribution to Fluxus. I think her output is beyond phenomenal and I strongly beliee she would have a greater reputation in her own right had she  never met John Lennon. This woman in her 80s is still pissing people and getting the type of reactions associated with Cage and Stravinsky in their youths. I cannot stop being inspired by that. I switch from insincerity to Yoko Ono because she is sincere and, as corny as it sounds to say, she has never stopped being true to herself as an artist. The easy out for dismissing her work is to say she was a horrible wife and mother, and that she cashed in on Lennon’s legacy. None of this is true. John was a fucking douchenozzle of a father and husband, it was Yoko who kept the family together. The only question I would have about this is “Why?” He gave  her nothing but I think her instincts were to nurture his vulnerabilities into extinction. He was a boy. She was his mother. I think theirs was a most beautiful romance summarized in one word: YES.