1:19 AM in Los Angeles

strangely, i’m alive.

the hotel im in is a relic from an old california where it wasn’t uncommon to see buildings splashed in bright greens and pinks.

it’s like im on an old abandoned wes andersen movie set - very quiet, no signs of life, one old guy sitting by the pool with an impossible amount of cigarette ends in an ash tray.

a very watered down grand budapest if you will.

there are two paintings in the room. On the right, a painting of a window. The building is white, the window sills and other accent features a range of very light blues. 5 potted plants, two sitting on a the sill, two hanging on the right side and one hanging on the left. All the plants on the right are greens of some sort, but on the left, the hanging plant houses red flowers of some sort, and the pot sitting on the sill holds white ones.

Try to imagine this- the picture is nestled within a rather large, light blue asymmetrical border. on the left, more thick side of the thing it says M I C H A E L P O T T E R and on the southern end of the rather large, light blue asymmetrical border it says L I T H O G R A P H S / M I R A G E E D I T I O N S

all this within a thin golden standard picture frame.

upon closer inspection, in the bottom left hand side it says “NEW ORLEANS”, opposite of that , “michael.w.potter”

The painting itself is fine, but I just cannot get over the choice to present it this way.

On the left hand side of the room, there is perhaps an even more interesting paintings. A very stylized, perhaps scribbly sort of rendition of 4 flowers in a vase. It’s much “simpler” but it would take me a lot more time to describe

It’s very rough, very loose,and I like it a lot, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for assuming it was the work of an elementary school student. Most interestingly to me though, top right corner, huge scribble of what I assume to be the artist’s initials. VA or perhaps NA, hard to be sure.

I’m both cases, I’m unfortunately much more interested in why such massive sections of the art are dedicated to - how do I put this?

While I was in art school, we watched a sort of biographical film about one artist or another. The thing that stuck with me the most, for all these years was a line where she says someone told her “when you get to art school, all you’ll find are artists practicing their signatures.”

post script.

This is the first time I’ve been in a hotel room since that January at the Radisson Blu Stansted. It feels like a real book ending as the last time “SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THEM ALREADY OH MY FUCKING GOD”