M○C△ Confessional: I'm Afraid of Crypto Art
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It’s a pleasure to see you back here, for another experimental kind of
4:27pm EST, April 2nd: Tonight at 9pm, I have my first NFTNYC event of the year. NFTNYC is the only cryptocurrency gathering I’ve ever been to, so it’s basically my crypto-world-interaction Mecca. And if you read the MOCA Confessional from a few weeks back about the TASCHEN event at Christie’s, you’ll know that I have some —how to put this— trepidations about meeting online folks in the real world.
So I thought I would stay true to the name of this column and confess to you —in advance of what I imagine will be a stressful, exhaustive, at times jubilant few days of meetings, events, exhibitions, performances, and unexpected interactions— how I’m feeling.
4:35pm: I have 4ish hours to write about how I feel going into this thing. Tomorrow, I’ll come back and reflect, see if my fears were founded, whether I learned anything or discovered some things about myself, crypto art, the nature of worry, etc.
4:36pm: Guess how I’m feeling now.
8:03pm: Perhaps the difficulty I have with these events is a matter of ego. Lest you were unaware, all writers (except maybe Lao Tzu) are egoists. And so it eats at me —though I wish it didn’t, because it’s ridiculous— that though I put so much work into this crypto art stuff, I remain more-or-less institutionally uncelebrated. This is not compliment-fishing, I promise, but I don’t land on many invite lists, I don’t get asked to speak on panels, I find myself in big lusty rooms for only two reasons: I personally know someone in a position of power (or just recently interviewed them), or I’ve affixed myself to a bigwig with clout enough for me to ride their coattails.
But damn it all, I want to feel cool! I want to be treated like a significant contributor to this movement, though any movement would do, I suppose. Do you know why I first decided, over a decade ago, to begin writing every day, to dedicate myself so completely to this craft? It was to take revenge on an ex-girlfriend who had scorned me. I would become great, and through greatness I would become famous, and through fame I would earn love, and if I were so great, famous, and loved, she would become jealous. She would know she made a massive mistake, and that was supposed to bring me joy.
And here I am complaining about my lack of love, fame, greatness, all of it. So my revenge is going about as well as it usually does.
8:13pm: If it weren’t for this column, there’s a solid chance I’d convince myself not to go to this thing tonight. Instead, I could hibernate, I could watch some basketball, I could get out in front of some more work, and while I know that I wouldn’t exactly be letting anyone down by staying home, I also know that I would be filled with regret.
8:15pm: The questions I find myself asking are Why do we do what we do?
Why do we come to New York?
Why do we RSVP to all these events, that will put us in so many pulsing rooms, to face the existential threat of inattention?
Why do we feel the compulsion to go out?
New York is the posterchild for what I’m about to describe, but it’s endemic to all cities. It’s both the great appeal of urban life, and also what makes it odious to many. There is an unknown which permeates this place. Behind every door is an unthinkably vast network of unforeseen possibilities. Every subway car could be the one where you get stabbed. And these possibilities increase proportionally to the number of people in a given place. To go out into New York, towards a room with so many souls stuffed inside it, is to waltz with the unknown, to get between the sheets with complexity.
I don’t like complexity. I am a simple person with a simple life. I watch a lot of sports. A lot. I cook most of my own meals. I do yoga, listen to podcasts, sleep late, write weird fiction. Most of my days are composed of only these things in various combinations.
And coffee. I drink a tremendous amount of coffee.
But out in New York, I court conversations I cannot expect, with people I cannot predict, fingering drinks and removing my hand from my pocket. This understanding is both magnetic and repulsive. We fear the unknown, and yet we seek to conquer it. It fascinates us, especially in this low-stakes setting, by promising a unique kind of excitement. When that promise of excitement results in actual excitement, there is no finer effervescence. We float our way home.
But when the promise of excitement is unkept, and we leave only 40 anxious minutes after we arrive, and it’s raining, and the trains aren’t arriving on time, and our memory is of a room full of voices which we did not contribute to, oh god, that’s the pits.
Even if that’s not how the thing ever really turns out, the possibility alone has a chilling effect. That possibility is what’s making this couch below me feel oh-so comfy. The rain outside sound oh-so dissuasive. Tonight’s completely routine slate of basketball games seem unmissable.
8:26pm: Nevertheless, in four minutes I will venture out of this warm, comfortable, unmissably-entertaining place and seek the unknown.
I should probably get dressed.
8:29pm: I have yet to get dressed. Lol.
1:26am, April 3: Well, that was entirely unexpected.
11:44am, April 3rd: Now that I’ve let last night settle —and despite everything I’m about to write— I can honestly say, “Wow, that was wonderful.”
The event, kojii x Botto’s, was a masterclass in simplicity. Big room, good music (SamJ, who I knew was an incredible mind and artist, also turns out to be an incredible DJ), with tall cans of water available at the bar, which is great because it meant I could drink water but also have something to hold for a long period of time, which is very important for someone who doesn’t know what to do with their hands.
I swear, the universe’s sense of humor must have read my above paragraphs and decided to respond with irony because I was recognized for the first time in my life (well, actually, this isn’t completely true. I bear an astounding physical similarity to a white, Jewish, Philadelphia-based rapper named Lil Dicky, and I am often stopped, gawked at, asked to have my picture taken, but since I am not this man, the experience lacks a certain affirmation). I was shouted at, ran up to, and entered into a marvelous conversation with DADA’s Gypsielou. That was admittedly very awesome. I was also able to speak (shout, really) at length with a lot of good souls: OONA, Aleqth, Clay Devlin, Shivani Mitra, SamJ, Aaron Huey, Iñaki Claisse. It was a really wonderful evening, and for a few benign hours, I felt like a load-bearing strand in the crypto art fabric.
But there are inextricable things about this ecosystem that I cannot forget while within it, and which make me want to run as far away as possible from these parties, from these brilliant conversations with sparkling minds, to ballast myself within the fortress of my bedroom and maintain an internet of distance between me and the entire crypto art ecosystem.
Like I said before, I’m a simple person. Complexities frustrate me. And human behavior is chief among these complexities.
I cannot read minds, I cannot gauge tone, I cannot glean subtext, and if you’re thinking “Man, this guy’s love life must suck,” then, well, you said it, friend. I function exclusively off of directly-communicated or apparent information. I trust what is presented to me because why would that information be tainted, twisted, or turned around? Why would I suspect it to be? The version of my life where I walk around wielding suspicion is a worse version of my life.
In other words, I’m naive, hopelessly naive. And naive people like me have only two real options:
Get used and passed around and stomped on by savvier, cynical individuals. This doesn’t happen to me almost ever, which is probably because I’m a man living within a patriarchy, but also maybe because of option 2.
Never invest yourself so much in something that your naivete can lead to negative outcomes.
So this is where crypto art comes in. When having conversations with real people about real things, truths traded and secrets shared, I learn, every time as if for the first time, that I have no idea what’s really going on in this space. I stay in my room most days writing as a matter of necessity. If I really engaged with the crypto art world, went out into it and frollicked around, I wouldn’t last a day. One of the reasons I love our podcasts, and why I love talking to Colborn on them, is he’s the opposite. He is fully integrated into crypto art. He understands (and so is often depressed by) the dirtiness of this art movement, the influencer tactics, the market manipulations, the backdoor deals, the manipulation of interests, all the grittiness that I, seeing only sunshine and rainbows over the clouds, am unable to make out as more than just vague shadows down below. From behind the safety of a computer screen, I do not have to be me, and I do not situate myself within a rocking sea of things I cannot understand.
In person, it’s different. I walk into a big room full of people talking, people with intentions, they want to network, they want to sell their art, they want to promote themselves, they want to snuff out opportunity, they want to climb. Not everyone, obviously, and probably not even most people, but I know they’re there and I know I can’t recognize them. So up goes a force-field, between naive me and the dangerous world, which is smarter and craftier than me, and if I drop my shield, it will eclipse me, and I don’t know what happens after that. I fear this unknown more than any other.
This is the unknown I discovered when I left my house last night.
12:21pm EST: Last year, I was on the verge of becoming legitimate IRL friends with an artist, and, in a panic, I told them this:
“I appreciate you greatly, but I really prefer to keep the whole crypto art world, and the professional sphere of my life, separate from my social life. I apologize and hope you dont take it personally, it’s just always been important to me to draw a line between the two.”
Almost a full year later, I understand why. Crypto art is a messy, dramatic, complicated world. Mess, drama, and complications are anathema to me. I am not equipped to wade through these waters, and, in fact, I’m fairly confident I will drown in them. So I put on arm floaties before I go for a swim. The tex above is my arm floaties.
The art world and finance world and tech world are all complex, terrifying beasts in their own right, but in crypto art, they have been tangled into a fearsome Cerberus. I’m jealous of how others invest themselves so fully and completely, their professional and personal lives both, in a place that is so wriggly and crawly and simmering with subterranean secretiveness, but I cannot, or at least I cannot yet.
And I confess: I’m sacrificing the heights of what crypto art can offer so as to keep myself protected from its worst.
So, yeah, anyways, last night was crazy, huh?
-Your friendly neighborhood Art Writer,