Welcome to the MTK Archive

Bienvenue, Welkom, Wilkommen, Saludo and Greetings:

This site is mostly in English. It covers about forty years, using a free WordPress template from 2012. I pay for the dot-org myself and it is completely non-commercial. If you have patience, there is much to see, hear and read here. It’s like a book.

Know that this site is not selling anything. You can peruse peacefully.

This site’s best viewed on a computer, laptop or pad. There’s an ABOUT page.

I joined Twitter for exactly ten years. I was @mtksfbay from 4th of April 2011, until 4th of April 2021.

I’ve never been on F*cebook. FB has done more to steal people’s creativity and individuality, and their ability to think for themselves, than any invention in history. I never wanted them to own my content, so instead, I stuck to blogging. But feel free to share anything you find here on FB or elsewere. By sharing it from here it’s tagged with my handle.

I ended this blog in 2017, but restarted it just for the year of 2022 in reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. I continue to use my Youtube channel @MTKarthik but other than that, I can’t be found on social media. What you find here are all original thoughts, art and writing, made from without that world.

This blog has had a few thousand readers. Thanks to each and every one of you. Occasionally looking at stats and seeing you exist has meant more to me than you can know. As a writer and artist this has been a safe place to post freely, unburdened by political or commercial demands or the need to satisfy the “social media” construct – the entertainment content.

After a hiatus of many years, I hope to publish long form writing and produce large scale art. I am 55 years old now, remain generally unknown and continue to produce content that follows the methodologies and ideation you can find here: pacifism, internationalism, syncretism, and transcendentalism.

Hope I run into you someday and we can collaborate to help this world. Til then, good bye and good luck.

Love,

M.T. Karthik

Puducherry, India

December 31, 2022

last seconds

Tags

, , , ,

It’s near midnight here
soon to be the last day of the year
I’m killing time
my only perpetration of murder

unless you count the smashed roaches and other bugs

that my Dad and the Jains count
but I don’t

they sweep the ground in front of themselves
to avoid stepping on ants

Dad would say a prayer for bugs that hit his windshield
as he gripped the wheel two-handed on our doomed summer vacations

fools
accidents happen
they always will
and maybe

to you

tomorrow

and you won’t experience
one second
of the new year

or any of the ten
in the countdown to it

and when they sing
Auld Lang Syne

it’s you
they’ll be thinking of

murderer

– M.T. Karthik, Pondicherry, 12/30/2022

Final Post of 2022

whew. After ending this archive blog in 2017, I resurrected it in 2022, to declare my survival through the pandemic. But this will be my final post unless a pandemic or something wild of that sort brings me back. Thanks so much to all of you who have read my posts or enjoyed my videos. Best wishes for good health to you and yours in ’23 and beyond.

I don’t usually make resolutions, but, after two years of pandemic protocols and wildly different opinions expressed from every quarter about how we ought to behave in the presence of Covid-19, the nastiest respiratory virus in human history, I felt the need to motivate myself to act and not to be afraid, so I made a resolution on New Year’s Eve last year: I wanted to travel again.

I always find myself on the road. It’s what being homeless most of my life, placeless, has given me – a love of the road. I had followed CDC protocols and had my shots. I still have never contracted the disease to my awareness. If I’ve had it, I never had symptoms.

First, I went to New York to see what it was like “post-pandemic”. Manhattan was a ghost town amidst the Omicron wave. I was afraid to ride the contained space of the subway, so I didn’t even go to Brooklyn, but at least I got a taste once again of the uniquely special energy of that city – that last month was declared the most expensive city in the world.

I spent most of the year in my beloved San Francisco, spending money liberally at businesses that had suffered months and months in the absence of tourists. Saw some really special performances at the Black Cat. Caught some ballgames at the yard, now called Oracle Park.

I went with native americans, to Alcatraz on Indigenous People’s Day for a sunrise ceremony. Held every year on Thankstaking Day, a second day has been added with the acknowledgment of Indigenous People’s Day – on what was only called Columbus Day.

I made it down to San Diego and visited the zoo and caught the last game of the baseball season at Petco Park – our Giants won, to achieve a .500 record, avoiding a losing season. San Diego felt open, post-pandemic and San Francisco was getting there, too. It was time to go abroad.

I chose Amsterdam, first. Things felt crowded, busy and back to normal – nobody even mentioned Covid or the pandemic. I saw very few masks. Social distancing was a thing of the past. I enjoyed the city for weeks and you can see that: Herfst in Amsterdam was wonderful.

From Amsterdam it was off to India and my beloved Pondy – Puducherry! Thank you mother India for welcoming me to the secure comfort of your bosom where I know myself. There’s lots more here on India and content on my youtube channel.

You can use the category 2022 to see all the posts from this year. I also added some Time Travel pieces that group content from months over the last forty years: Time Travel Posts.

But it’s time for me to spend energy on other things.

I was lucky to catch the 2022 Kollam Exhibition on the Pondicherry Promenade and was touched by something I read on one of the pieces. I will conclude with that message:

Be Good, Do Good in 2023

Happy New Year

love,

mtk

December 28th, Tamil Nadu, India

Time Traveling in ’22 – edition four

It’s Time Trav number four!

This is the fourth of a series of posts entitled Time Travel in ’22 with MTK (categorized 22TimeTrav) in which I link back to the archive to posts from on or around today’s date. Meta. In this case it’s links from the month of December over the last 34 years.

IN THIS MONTH, DECEMBER, I …

34 years ago … collected ticket stubs from movies of the late-1970’s and ’80’s

27 years ago … wrote some poems

26 years ago … wrote this journalistic essay about my beloved San Francisco

25 years ago … moved to New York City and wrote detailed journalistic essays about it

23 years ago … published a fictional short story in a national magazine

20 years ago … wrote this essay about the hypocrisy and violence of US foreign policy

19 years ago … reported live from Palestine, Jerusalem and Jordan – radio journalism for ten days

18 years ago … traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico

17 years ago … read a bunch of books that year and made a list

16 years ago … traveled to India, where I photographed and purchased three-wheeled vehicles for Tricycle Museum, a collaboration with Rigo 23 that traveled to Portugal

12 years ago … filmed a seagull helping pigeons to food in San Francisco

11 years ago … saw Iggy and the Stooges and the Butcherettes at the Warfield

10 years ago … wrote and posted a LOT to this then brand-new blog

6 years ago … made a statement about atheism and nihilism

5 years ago … I concluded this blog at the age of 50 with book reviews and videos

There you go: thirty-four years of Decembers in:

San Antonio, New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco and India.

I never sought recognition or made much of an effort to promote myself. That’s why I put everything here. I still seek help to publish and produce both work from the past and current work and am, as always, open to proper collaboration that could get me wider reach, without compromising the identity I have worked so hard to maintain.

Best,

mtk

The Obliquity of the Ecliptic in the Morning in Amsterdam

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It was Gattis’ British television series Sherlock with Cumberbatch and Freeman that reawakened the tongues of English speakers to the lovely swinging ringlets of the phrase, “the obliquity of the ecliptic.” Once you know, you know. It’s the phrase we use to describe the 23 degree tilt of our earth on its axis with respect to the sun. I noticed its effect today in Amsterdam.

I learned about the obliquity of the ecliptic, and about the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, when I was around twelve years old, first from my Dad and then in an astronomy class I took at the University of Texas at San Antonio, then a small, new, commuter college where my father was the Director of the Division of Earth and Physical Sciences.

I was just a kid in middle school, but Dad spoke with the professors and they allowed me to audit an astronomy class and a geology class during my summer vacation. I wasn’t taking exams or being graded like the regular students of these summer courses, who were ten years older than me, but Dad made me report the exams and class work back to him and we worked on them together, sometimes.

I’d go to campus with Dad in the morning and spend the day there, taking my two classes and hanging around the new campus that was hardly built. Dad would be in the lab and I would be running around playing. I played basketball in the gym or I’d hunt for caves in the undeveloped limestone bedrock. In the 1970’s, the place was crawling with horned toads and lizards and snakes – a veritable smörgåsbord for the school’s mascot, the roadrunners.

Most of these species, including the roadrunner, have been made locally extinct in the area by the development of the 30,000-student, fulltime University that UTSA has become. Things change. Even the obliquity of the ecliptic, which is now about 23.4° but currently decreasing 0.013 degrees (or 47 arcseconds) every hundred years.

I didn’t realize how precious that time was to me, and the nature lover I became, until just now, thinking about that summer and the Astronomy class where I learned about the tilt of the earth – which I observed today at noon in Amsterdam in the long-shadowed, exaggerated evidence of the obliquity of the ecliptic:

Spinoza, Rembrandt and the Dutch Enlightenment in Amsterdam at the Rijks, and Multatuli in its Wake

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I am writing something and these are my initial thoughts

Westermoskee

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Westermoskee – in Turkish Ayasofya Camii, and English, the Western Mosque – is a blissfully serene, Ottoman-form mosque built in a Neo-Classical style along the canal Schinkel in the Schaasebuurt in De Baarsjes in Amsterdam West – a calm, quiet neighborhood.

Wiki tells us: the building was designed by French traditional architects Marc and Nada Breitman, winners of the 2018 Driehaus Prize and part of the New Classical movement.

Construction started in 2013. the building was completed in 2015, and the mosque unofficially opened in Spring of 2016. It is the largest mosque in the Netherlands. Features of the Ottoman style are the single minaret and large Ottoman styled main dome.

MOCO Amsterdam’s Listicle Curation: Kusama, Warhol, Banksy & Contemporary ‘Masters’ – plus Studio Irma Digital Immersion ‘like the one in Barcelona’

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It was like walking into a university show in Soho in the ’90’s – Kusama, Warhol, Haring, Basquiat, Koons and Hirst – then suddenly it was like street stuff from the aughts: banksy, Stik, Invader.

Then Hayden Kays and KAWS and Takashi Murakami and Abloh is how it morphed into stuff I had only seen over the last five years because Google throws it up on my projector on heavy rotation ad nauseum thousands of miles from here – like Dream. (to old heads, I say big ups to Oaktown DREAM, rest in power). Then there was a Hirst and a Koons and a Warhol and a sweet roomful of Yayoi Kusama.

Moco Amsterdam is housed in the Villa Alsberg, a townhouse overlooking Museumplein in the heart of Amsterdam (between the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum). The building was designed in 1904 by Eduard Cuypers, nephew of Pierre Cuypers, designer of Amsterdam Central Station and the Rijksmuseum.

It is a good collection of very specifically well-known contemporary art, linked only by their pop. They don’t hide it, Moco calls itself a “boutique museum.” They have a second location in Barcelona. I heard the immersive digital art installation by Studio Irma was the same there.

What is this show exactly? I found out about it from posters slapped around town:

Wait – what? I was standing there in the street thinking that looks like clickbait for a museum exhibition produced by the marketing department. Here’s 4k video of my visit to Moco Amsterdam … check it:

Moco’s building was a privately-owned residence and one of the first family homes built along Museumplein. It was inhabited until 1939. Then, the house was let to priests who taught at the Saint Nicolas School in Amsterdam. Later it was converted into an office for a law firm.

Moco took over the Villa Alsberg and opened the museum in 2016, a traditional Amsterdam townhome on the museumplein, converted into a walk-through collection. But it is densely packed with the art and difficult to navigate when crowded. I was here on a rainy Thursday and it was claustrophobic. They should show less and allow for more space before the art.

Some artists received better purchase, weirdly (read: banksy). The one Warhol inclusion was pretty cool – diamond dust. Kusama is boss. Banksy’s tenner is great. The sculptures in the garden by Marcel Wander were precious. Studio Irma’s digital immersive art was low-tech, high-concept and cool. But it’s a densely installed collection. It was difficult to appreciate a large canvas by Hayden Kays, mounted in a small room. The Harings were also installed in a small square room, jammed with people. It was awkward.

Koons and Hirst were kind of just stuck in the hallways. Rooms were grouped loosely by era, but not distinctly so. They had these vague categories – Modern Masters, Contemporary Masters. It may have been an attempt to contrast-gain through equanimity but the install just felt crammed and poorly considered.

Prints were indicated to have been authenticated by the artists. The provenance for the Invader piece was credited to Jared Leto. Things that were new to me that I enjoyed were the playful works of Marcel Wander, the digital immersive stuff by Studio Irma and the large canvases (panels?) by The Kid.

The Kid, a contemporary painter using oils to create large photocollage-style paintings, had exquisite technique, though the work was conceptually immature. I wondered if there were painters in this land that spawned Rembrandt, Hals and Hooch and Vermeer and Van Gogh – and if so, what were they into? As a young artist, The Kid is into deeply personal concerns at the moment, but he will be good to watch evolve as a painter. I admired his use of pseudonym and rejection of nation-state in the establishment of his identity. Smart kid.

Ultimately, though, the artists were equalized in the hyper-capitalized gift shop that was tragically post-ironic: Campbell Soup Can skate decks beside decks that had banksy’s girl and balloon – where’s that dough going? Basquiat crowns as lapel pins. Is the Basquiat Estate or somebody who owns some weird rights making money here? on hundreds of euros worth of cheap, chinese-made kitschy derivative chunks of plastic? Is this a non-fungible token (NFT) emerging into totally fungible bullshit (TFB) in the museum culture?

Sure enough, the exibit includes NFT: The New Future, which they claim is, “Europe’s first dedicated exhibition space to the NFT phenomenon.” Beeple. It feels half baked. Exhibition spaces for non-fungible things.

Your ticket comes with a free gift from the museum and a discount for the gift shop. The shop was cringe. There were totes and hats and pins and cards and posters, lots of pink and the generalized motto of the museum: In Art We Trust. I mean. Look, it was a decent show or a weird collection of highly successful names in art since like 1990, in a house, but … what is this?

The curatorial sense here seems to be: throw as many recognizable names up as possible to herd in the stoned masses visiting the museumplein. Oh, and cater to the ever-increasing LGBTQ+ tourism euro, by featuring gay cultural icons and the color pink. This show wasn’t so much curated as listicled. Superficial.

By my observation, the corporate partners of high-profile museums in city centers of the colonial era are amidst a reformation, post-George Floyd – a Black Lives Matter effect is international. Woke culture expects more. Millennials are uninterested in the old narratives. Moco seems to seek to fill a void in perspective over traditional museums – that of street art and free expression. But superficial listicle curation for tourist-culture, and capitalist reduction of profound cultural expression, is gauche.

Moco resides somewhere between traditional museum culture and the modern art marketplace. It’s like a brick and mortar pop magazine on the museumplein.

from Amsterdam, I’m

M.T. Karthik

Over Millennia Heen, Google Translation of an MTK Essay

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Original English 2020, Google Translated to Dutch and Posted today, 2022

17 januari 2020

De machines namen op subtiele wijze de controle over de tijd over van de mensheid en bijna niemand merkte het op.

Deze tientallige cultus van decennia, eeuwen en millennia veroverde de hele cultuur in een tijdsbestek van vijfentwintig jaar en werd het eerste salvo van de machines, met als hoogtepunt de overeenkomst tussen hen die bekend staat als 2000.

Ik ben geboren in een continue en oude cultuur , ongebonden aan dergelijke beperkingen, die tot intellectuele, filosofische, culturele en artistieke hoogten stegen. We vonden schaken uit en een concept van nul en vele andere filosofieën die zich in jullie (met terugwerkende kracht genoemde) eerste millennium vanuit de boezem van ons land naar buiten over de continenten verspreidden.

Totdat we op brute wijze werden onderbroken door de Europeanen in hun woeste eeuwen – van het gebruik van schepen om overal te reizen en iedereen te onderwerpen in naam van een ‘beschaving’ die we vonden en nog steeds vinden als invasief, lomp, fysiek, brutaal, kortzichtig, arrogant en onwetend.

Ze leerden wat ze wilden leren, waar ze baat bij hadden, maar snel … verdienen).

Dus ja, plotseling, precies in het midden van hun tweede millennium, gedurende vijf eeuwen, voerden ze deze wrede, onmenselijke, racistische projectie op de wereld uit, met als hoogtepunt landroof van continentale omvang dat probeerde honderden naties van miljoenen mensen te genocide, die ze ten onrechte indianen en zwarten noemden.

We keken naar dit alles vanaf de andere kant van de wereld, waar ook wij gedwongen werden de aanval van de Europeanen op te vangen, voornamelijk de Britten. Ook wij ervoeren toen de God-complexe en sluwe manipulaties die ze gebruikten om zichzelf te verheffen en ons tot onderwerping te buigen.

Dus, net toen hun tweede millennium ten einde liep en hun filosofie een zogenaamd postkoloniaal tijdperk schonk, behoren ook wij tot de honderden miljoenen die het juk van hun onderwerping van zich afschudden.

Mijn bestaan ​​strekt zich uit over millennia.

En ik weet niet wanneer je leeft, maar we worden nu dagelijks wakker om na te denken over de mogelijkheid van onze volledige en totale uitroeiing, niet noodzakelijkerwijs door toedoen van gewelddadige mensen, maar misschien als gevolg van wat de Europeanen in het halve millennium heeft gewerkt, in voor- en tegenspoed. Ze bouwen, beschermen en verzekeren hun clubhuis gebouwd van racistische sociale waarheden voor de 1%.

Hun afweer en onzekerheid in het langzame besef van hun tekortkomingen, verlamt ons, terwijl we proberen het langzame, eeuwenoude werk te doen … van het kalmeren, zelfs kalmeren van de oorlogszuchtige aard die zo snel opduikt in het gegrom.

Het wekt flitsende woede en gewelddadige explosies op die verwoestende gevolgen hebben voor honderdduizenden families en onschuldigen.

Het handhaaft blanke suprematie en raciale dominantie. Het gaat door en verergert verraderlijk door luid en op enorm internationaal volume degenen te promoten die voortdurend hun verhaal vertellen, met als hoogtepunt de lelijke rauwe kapitalistische boer die Trump is – een PT Barnum in het Witte Huis die denkt dat hij God is.

(beats)

Het legt degenen die parallelle geschiedenis vertellen stilletjes het zwijgen op – door ze te verwijderen uit de formele digitale basis-tien op het internet tussen de opgeslagen gegevens. En maakt ze impopulair door ze te overstemmen en op alle andere manieren die nodig zijn. Facebook is hiervoor de perfecte machine.

Dit betekent, in sommige gevallen, de waarheid op alle mogelijke manieren impopulair maken en de echte waarheid op alle mogelijke manieren vervangen door een sociale waarheid.

Ze hebben nog niet volledig ingezien dat wat ze hebben gedaan verkeerd was, ze verontschuldigden zich niet, toonden geen berouw, vroegen niet oprechte vergeving en probeerden niet te herstellen wat was.

In plaats daarvan hebben ze hun eigen geschiedenis gecreëerd die deze millennia labelt, de kalender vaststelt en wanneer de dag begint en eindigt en globalistische termen gebruikt voor woeste kapitalistische engagementen, waarin geld de almachtige is en oorlog om hulpbronnen eeuwigdurend is. Ze roepen zichzelf uit tot overwinnaars van deze continentale landroof en eeuwenlang slavenbezit.

Op de klok waaronder we leven aan het begin van hun derde millennium, drijven ze de motor van onze wereld waanzinnig vooruit in een steeds onhoudbaarder tempo.

Mijn naam is Karthik en ik ben een mens, geboren in Tamil Nadu, India, en de afgelopen 50 jaar opgegroeid in de Verenigde Staten van Amerika. Ik ben goed opgeleid en lees dagelijks een grote hoeveelheid contemporaine informatie en gegevens over onze tijd. Ik ben werkloos en gescheiden van alle ideologieën.

Ik verkoop niets en ik ben niet op zoek naar een baan.

Ik probeer alleen maar te communiceren hoe misselijk en beschaamd ik ben door de VS. En om je te smeken om te stoppen. Koppel los. Vertragen. Ga terug naar wie je werkelijk bent. Je bent verdwaald en rent in een razend tempo.

Als je verdwaald bent, ren dan niet in een razend tempo. 

Hou op.

Rustig aan.

Verzamel gegevens en evalueer de huidige situatie, wat er feitelijk voor u ligt.

Organiseer en herschik uw prioriteiten naar de onmiddellijke.

Time Traveling in ’22 – edition three

Tags

, ,

It’s Time Trav number three!

This is the third of a series of posts entitled Time Travel in ’22 with MTK (categorized 22TimeTrav) in which I link back to the archive to posts from on or around today’s date. Meta. In this case it’s links from the month of November over the last 31 years.

IN THIS MONTH, NOVEMBER, I …

31 years ago … was “Carter Ryan” News and Sports Radio Anchor on Intercontinental Radio Taiwan (ICRT)

27 years ago … wrote an article about Rigo 95 for *surface magazine and began a ten year friendship with him

26 years ago … wrote some poems

26 years ago … witnessed the death of a close family friend and wrote about it

22 years ago … covered the Florida Fiasco of the 2000 Election for George magazine

20 years ago … wrote about the off-year elections and accused the Bush Administration of fascism

18 years ago … wrote a public letter to Senator Barbara Boxer beseeching her to contest the election

17 years ago … summarized the tremendous amount of work I did for Pacifica Radio

16 years ago … wrote this poem about changing India

15 years ago … wrote and self-published a poem as an artists book

14 years ago … wrote a detailed analysis of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai

12 years ago … was downtown in San Francisco as the Giants won the World Series

11 years ago … began a book about technology and society called Plug/Unplug

10 years ago … created this blog! and took footage of pelicans and coastal california

9 years ago … covered the 40-year North Oakland tradition called the Turkey Shoot

7 years ago … a poem about the maddening flow of time

6 years ago … did some work about Bob Dylan after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature

5 years ago … some art and kayaked Lake Austin with my son

There you go: thirty-one years of Novembers in:

Taiwan, India, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco and San Antonio.

I never sought recognition or made much of an effort to promote myself. That’s why I put everything here. I still seek help to publish and produce both work from the past and current work and am, as always, open to proper collaboration that could get me wider reach, without compromising the identity I have worked so hard to maintain.

Best,

mtk

Time Traveling ’22 with MTK – edition two: Octobers

Tags

, , , , , ,

It’s Time Trav number two!

This is the second of a series of posts entitled Time Travel in ’22 with MTK (categorized 22TimeTrav) in which I link back to the archive to posts from on or around today’s date. Meta. In this case it’s links from the month of October over the last 38 years.

IN THIS MONTH, OCTOBER …

38 Years Ago … at twilight, I took this picture with 35mm film of Matt Sherwood and John Gentz

28 years ago … Kenny Trice took this picture of me having a cigar on Ocean Beach

27 years ago … I wrote a poem entitled “Memorandum” – (really liked this one, think stylistically it was ahead of its time)

26 years ago … wrote more poetry in my journals

25 years ago … wrote my first koan. And a short story called, “We,” – the editors of The New Yorker hand-wrote a rejection on one of their cards that read, “this is more like one we’d publish,” or something like that. Was thrilled to receive that, I remember

24 years ago … MY THIRD NOVEL! “Karna’s Conflict,” was completed. Originally typewritten in three days, this unappreciated gem was posted online before and during the Millennium

23 years ago … wore a shirt that read “Fuck Rudy,” to the Sensation exhibit at Brooklyn Museum of Art, when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to censor it

20 years ago … produced this music video with Frank Sosa using footage by A.P. Ferrara from the massive protest against war as a reaction to 9/11 that was held in Washington, D.C.

19 years ago … I covered the Recall Election that installed Arnold Schwarzenegger Governor of California for Pacifica Radio and BBC drive time radio in the UK

17 years ago … completed the artist’s book, dereliction, which now resides in the permanent collection at Stanford. I was very proud of that one. Hello, Stanford? Get in touch.

15 years ago … recorded the sound of an F/A 18 Jet as it screamed over my head during Fleet Week in San Francisco

14 years ago … finished a short story  I had been working on for the previous seven years, entitled: “Before You Came.”

13 years ago … attended Steph Curry’s first game and filmed it with digital camera!

12 years ago … The Giants won the pennant and I was with the fans at the yard

11 years ago … ended my campaign for Mayor of San Francisco

10 years ago … the Giants won the world series again

8 years ago … they did it again


5 years ago … reviewed “Manhattan Beach,” by Jennifer Egan

There you go: thirty-eight years of Octobers in:

San Antonio, New York, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco.

I never sought recognition or made much of an effort to promote myself. That’s why I put everything here. I still seek help to publish and produce both work from the past and current work and am, as always, open to proper collaboration that could get me wider reach, without compromising the identity I have worked so hard to maintain.

Best,

mtk

Quit Social Media, Think Critically and I’ll Try to Help With Side Discourse

Tags

, , , , ,

I covered a lot of elections during the dawn of this century. Then I stopped and unplugged from it all, and, instead of journalism, I turned to ten years of helping raise my child, making art, writing poetry and prosaic thoughts and, finally, helping my father transition from this world.

I used only WordPress blogs and Youtube channels and Twitter – but not Facebook, nor by extension Instagram, because from the beginning I despised Mark Zuckerberg and his bullshit machine and saw it for what it was – a Fuckerberg. It’s why you won’t see me in the metaverse.

For reference, back in ’20, I described myself in that context.

MTK Riffs Upper Manhattan in Winter

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post is like a Table of Contents. It’s a meta-post of links to photojournalistic blogposts of my trip to New York six months ago, amidst the Omicron wave of Covid in Manhattan, for five days in late January. The links are in chronological order, and refer back progressively, like chapters about my trip.

Wednesday

I was able to film as we approached on the afternoon of January 19th, flying into New York City.

landing at La Guardia on a clear, sunny day.

Later that night I took Tom to the Metropolitan Opera to see Quinn Kelsey perform Rigoletto.

Thursday

The next morning it dropped thirty degrees and snowed. I spent two hours at the Museum of Modern Art catching the last days of exhibitions of work by Joseph E. Yoakum, Sophie Teauber-Arp and others.

The streets were weirdly quiet and absent of crowds – like I have never seen Manhattan before, even in the heart of winter. New York was dead.

sparsely populated Manhattan streets

That afternoon and evening I hung out at Summit One Vanderbilt, which was exceptional. Because I purchased the afternoon Premium ticket, the sunset ticket, with access to the elevator to the summit, I was able to hang out in the bar all evening, where I was joined in conversation and fun by rotating groups of tourists (wonderful conversations atop Manhattan), and the elevator to the highest viewpoint was amazing.

view from the bar atop One Vanderbilt

Friday

… was in the 30’s.

I hit the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see Surrealism Beyond Borders, which surprised me.

Saturday

had a perfect breakfast sandwich at Chez Nick in Yorkville, a place to which I returned – delicious spot over there. It was the week that people were putting their Christmas trees out for pick up. Many people and hotels instead, turned them into decorative features in front of their buildings.

Xmas tree dumping week.

Sunday

January 23rd was my chance by appointment only to catch the last days of the chronological exhibition on the ramps of the Guggenheim, Kandinsky at the Gugg. That was, quite frankly, an excellent exhibition.

Five days in Manhattan: Opera. Museums. Observation Bar. Streets. and tossed out Xmas trees – Lakshmi-auntie would approve.

That’s for New York.

Love,

mtk