Daily Dose

Stevie Nicks as an artwork courtesy of Commander Cody

Apologies to all (ie both) of my loyal readers for being AWOL. The last few weeks The Artswipe has been holed up at home sick as a dog. I contracted a case of apathy. Who'd have thought that was sexually transmitted! I went to see the family doctor and all she could do was offer some aesthetic advice and tell me to avoid coming into contact with anything white. Maybe I should stop seeing a PhD and visit an MD like the rest of the world because whiteness if just too fucking pervasive to avoid. But if you must know what The Artswipe is endorsing at the moment, here goes.

My favourite new media piece of recent times was The Worm by Channel 9 (Sunday, October 21, 2007). That was hypnotic and quietly compelling. My favourite text art was from the Good Weekend (October 13, 2007) - especially this quote from an article about Stevie Nicks:

So 1993 comes rolling around, and Stevie Nicks is finally convinced that that the protracted high dosage of Klonopin might be killing her. So she does exactly what you or I might do. She instructs her personal assistant, Glenn, to take her daily dose - just to see what effect it has. "I said, 'It won't kill you, because it hasn't killed me, but I just want to see what you think... Well, after an hour... he said, 'I can't fix the stereo and I don't think I can drive home'. And I said, 'Well good - just stay there because I'm studying you.' And he was almost hallucinating. It was bad".

So I am reading this in the doctor surgery waiting room. That's the best place to read the Good Weekend as you can be waiting a long time and the dullness of the magazine is a perfect match to the dodgy interior design characteristic of such places. As I contemplate what it must be like to be Stevie Nicks, I have a killer idea for a performance piece. I will get my doctor to prescribe me high doses of Klonopin - a hearty tranquiliser endorsed by none other than the white witch herself - and hand it out at the next art opening I attend.

I will call this piece 'Studying' the White Cube (just like the white wing dove) 2007.

Later in the article Stevie talks about why she founded "The Stevie Nicks Soldier's Angel Foundation". In case you don't know, this foundation promotes the use of music in the rehabilitation of of US servicemen and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan by providing them with iPods. And that's just what those brave soldiers need.

It had crossed my mind that the consolation prizes offered to Australian Idol contestants as they get booted off (juicy plasma screens and then some) are probably more generous. But at least the gift of music heals like nothing else. Stevie just knows that it's better to scratch your phantom limb in time to the beat of Rhiannon than to the bitter bombless silence of American life post-wartime.