I thought I would stop keeping a blog because it seemed to get in the way of writing, but I discovered that I’m the thing that keeps getting in the way of writing. So I quit LJ instead and moved to my own little piece of WordPress real estate.

This weekend we’re in St Louis for some sort of academic convention for the GF. She’s a digital artist in a sea of photogeeks. To describe the shrill and defensive tone of this weekend I’ll tell you a little story about a band we knew in NYC.

We’ll call this band, The Kings (any likeness to any other band named The Kings is purely coincidental). The Kings were a crap to mediocre band. They played well enough, but their songs swung between grating and just unmemorable. The only people who attended their shows were friends who couldn’t say no (that would be me and the GF) and other crap to mediocre bands (it’s all a pyramid scheme, people!) who wanted other bands to come to their shows so they didn’t have to play to an empty house. The Kings would play a shrieking, wince-inducing set to spotty applause and then congratulate themselves afterward for such an incredible set. They would then proceed to trash the local scene for its lack of taste and support for struggling and truly talented bands (like themselves!). This would lead inevitably to a trashing of local successes (at the time, the local success story in progress was a little band you might have heard of, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Much griping about how the band was all hype and how they must know someone (a music critic, an uncle in the industry), blah, blah, whiney McBlah. Basically, The Kings were the unsung Van Gogh’s of the music world, if only the music world would swing it’s leviathan head around and notice. The fact that it didn’t obviously meant there was some sort of conspiracy to keep the truly great artists down. Sound familiar publishing folks?

Substitute “photographers/’artists'” for the band and you’ve got this conference in a nutshell. A bunch of mediocre talents griping about how technology (or anything else they don’t understand or are afraid of — which is everything) is ruining art.

The GF did meet a few kindred spirits and we got to see the spectacular “Girls’ Night Out” and “Working Girl” (Cindy fucking Sherman!!!) exhibit at St. Louis’ contemporary gallery so all was not lost.