Few will revisit the Whitney Biennial and fewer still would make a special return trip to see only the paintings. I’ll number myself among those few—I wanted to test a theory.

“Cloaca,” the machine that takes in food and turns it into shit, surprised the hell out of me. I’d expected to like it—a little. I wanted to see it eat, and I did see food washed down its gullet into a food disposal.

Some days, the act of painting seems so, well, useless. One is muse-less, headachy, hung-over, or distracted. It is then that I find it useful to pretend that I am a farmer. In my fantasy they get up early, quite early in the morning since the cows have to be milked and the growing season is short.

“First coffee and black bread, then just black bread, then plain water, then fever, exhaustion and delirium.”

Ladies, gentlemen, may I have your attention? I am about to speak of Vermeer and Clyfford Still and give a recipe for a baked chicken.

It is helpful, too, to say that the nipples are about one head below the chin, the navel another head below the nipples and the symphysis pubis about ¾ of a head below the navel.

Taste is that one of our senses that puts us in contact with palatable bodies by means of the sensation which they arouse in the organ designed to judge them.