David Grubbs LIVE!! DJ Chungking Xxpress in the studio!!!

It was well past three O'clock in the morning. John couldn't sleep again. Everytime he began to drift he would suddenly think, "Am I Sleeping?" which would, of course, would bring his weary mind back into consciousness. He had tried to sleep - ordered himself to - in his lonely bed for two hours and finally gave up. TV was no good, he thought he might take a drive. His car was really dirty; it had been more than a month since he had emptied it of the fast-food wrappers and general litter that accumulated. He climbed in and drove to the nearest gas station, a Chevron down the street, a pre-fab structure permanently washed in the white glow of halogen lights. His car pulled up near the far pump and he emptied the plastic bottles and candy wrappers, pored out a half-full drink from his cup holder, even shook out the floor mats. He walked over to the quickie-mart store and gave the locked glass doors a pull. He had forgotten it was so late because the blue-green light was so strong. He wandered to the attendants window, asking for a KitKat and a Sprite. $1.27.

He figured he would drive out to the airport, then back again, maybe even sit and watch the planes come and go. The radio was on low, but he turned it off, opened instead the window to let the cold night air mingle with his thoughts. He had been thinking alot about the nature of being a critic lately; his job at the paper had been slack lately because there just weren't alot of shows for him to write about. He'd gotten a letter a week ago from an old friend from college who had been drifting for years. He realized a certain tension lingering underneath their recent phone calls and knew that it resulted from his new role at the paper. His friend, Walter, held a firm grudge against the restraints of the contemporary gallery world, dominated - at least in Walters eyes -by the smug opinions of art critics. To Walter the art world was an evil place, crass, misinformed. He lobbied time and again that all contemporary art was shallow, that the only thing of real value resided in pre-WW II aesthetics. Walter wanted some new-form of art to emerge, one populated by figural narratives, involving layers of symbology and personal significance. Notions many artists held dear and steadfast as one of the only "truths" in art. John agreed with him and shared, to a small degree, his ideological stance, but what John couldn't figure out was Walter's hated of critics, the one group of people who seemed to be the link between such idealistic artists and the public "just-waiting" to understand their quirky and abstruse work. They had talked about Walter’s anti-theoretical views over a couple of times but in the recent letter John recieved, he mentioned something -he hoped it was in jest- about weather John’s artistic conscious was beginning to feel a disloyal split with his artistic one. It was prime Walter Greenfield, self-righteous and mopey, but it did bring up a valid point in the young mans mind. What was he turning into? Was he a critic or an artist?

The question turned in his mind as he entered the empty highway ramp and accelerated into the yellow street lamp night. He turned the question over. What if his interests lie more in criticism? Certainly he had garnered more attention as a critic as a writer than as an artist, but was he ready to give up what he believed to be his destiny? That thought made him shiver, not the wind leaking in through the cracked window, now loud and high-pitched. Could he juggle the two? It was already difficult, would he be able to continue to switch back and forth as his career continued? What if, now that he was to a position of some prominence, he decided to quit writing? Would he be seen as a failure?

His car neared the exit for the airport, it's glide arched effortlessly from the right lane to the high overpass, slowing as he reached the large backlit sign listing airline departures. Was quitting even an option? He had come such a long way in his own mind and the minds of others to becoming a viable force in his own community. He was regularly commended for doing a good job. Only recently was he in a position to take advantage of his status when Silvia Werner asked him about his own work and asked him to show with her in May. It was the first time he had felt compromised, and now that the deal was struck, it was far too late to back out. Walter's letter couldn't have come at a more susceptible time for his neurotic reason to consume.