Reality will be shattered quite soon.

How to destroy reality in three easy steps:

1. Write a post here at IntangibleArts (this very one, in fact), which links (right here, in fact) to a guest post I've written on the very awesome Prince of Petworth blog. (Many thanks to the good Prince, by the way.)

2. Above-mentioned guest post at PoP links back to IntangibleArts.

3. Follow the path of intersecting links and wait for the inevitable black hole, and/or gash to develop in the fabric of space/time. Have a cup of tea and enjoy the apocalypse.

It's been a good run, reality. I've enjoyed at least some of it. See you on the other side...

The view from here

...from the corner of 11th and Irving Streets, technically. I shot this same item nearly a year ago, but never thought to give it the inverted twist it was begging for.

Columbia Heights seems to be reveling in the extreme Dada of summertime. It's hot and humid, and we are thirsty. To that end, we're looking forward to our newest neighborhood watering hole, which is set to open this Friday. We've done the anxious neighbor bit of peeping through the windows during construction, and the bar looks gorgeous. With any luck, they'll do a great amount of business without becoming hopelessly mobbed.

They're building thirty billion condos on that block, so the bar-mobbing potential is real. We should learn from our spiritual leader Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and come armed with tasers in the event of mass crowding and a lack of seats. Nothing says "no really, sir, I was just leaving anyway" like 50,000 volts of stunning palpitations to the heart muscle.

Just kidding.

But speaking of varying degrees of Fear and Loathing, this Saturday is DC's very own super-sized Caribbean Carnival, the third largest festival of its kind in the nation. It will be total madness, with an overwhelming array of music, food, and costumed Jamaicans, jigging their way down Georgia Avenue like horny, feathered, rum-soaked aliens... I made the huge mistake of trying to DRIVE somewhere during the festival last year and vowed NEVER AGAIN. It took about five hours to crawl the six miles from Columbia Heights DC to Silver Spring, MD.

So this year, no plans. Just dive into the mash with camera and see what menacing joy and terror I can capture.

Watch this space for the result.

11th Street Dada

A tiny slice of life in Columbia Heights, looking north on 11th Street from Irving. Would dada-related stickers and graffiti be the mark of gentrification, or a sign of resistance?

My last great hope is: once this "development" phase is over, after the new Target store becomes a familiar landmark, and after the 'Heights reaches condo saturation, there will still be character marks like this, lurking in the dark corners. Eccentric humanity must survive, else this place will simply be a downtown Bethesda...and that, children, we cannot have.

Bring on the Dada.

Art is dead. All is Dada.

We finally hauled our bodies down to the Smithsonian for the National Gallery's Dada exhibit.

Rumor has it the presentation here at the NGA is not quite as "dada" as it was when the collection toured Europe recently. The Smithsonian opted for the more orderly geographic approach. One meanders from Zurich to Berlin, then on to Hannover, Cologne, NYC, and Paris, with many of the explosive artifacts of that movement resting in antiseptic cages and hung from the neck against the glare of halogens...

Still, it was a pleasure to see these things in person; things that had existed only in (stolen) library books for years. The movement was well captured, from the mounted "readymades" (bicycle wheel, snow shovel) to the meticulously engineered painted works like "Metropolis", that amazingly hellish vision in red by George Grosz. And of course, Kurt Schwitters' sound poems crooning from every corner.

I witnessed a few children being mesmerized outta their skulls by Duchamps' famous optical machine "Rotating Glass Plates" (photo above)... it's worth seeing the exhibit for the viewers' reactions as well as the pieces themselves.

...particularly, watch for the reactions of those who wandered in the wrong door, looking for the infinitely tamer Cezanne in Provence exhibit. You can find 'em by the smouldering scent of minds being blown...