#21: Dublin Drive Time

D'Olier Street, Dublin

While I have slowly surrendered some of my Luddite ways over the past few years, I still like to bemoan what I call the YouTube-ization of everyday life. Very few things in life are worth filming, and still fewer worth re-watching. This does not stop legions of so-called smartphone-wielding urbanites from whipping out their cameras to capture even slightly unusual events with the express intent of posting the clip online as quickly as possible: some dude breakdancing in Grand Central Station, or else the breathtaking magical holiday subway car -- an antique subway train fully restored to its past glory -- that unexpectedly pulled up today at the West 4th Street stop to take me on a rickety, surreal short trip back through time before dropping me off, bewildered, at 2nd Avenue. (Intrigued, New Yorkers? You can find out when to catch the vintage train here.)

Each to one's own, but I can't help pity these video vultures a bit. It's like they're ordering the fast food version of important moments: quality is of no object, only quickness, only grabbiness -- things must be captured at all cost. There's nothing worse than going to a great show where your view of the stage is obstructed by dozens of eager hands wielding so-called smart phones over their heads, the very LIVE show you are trying to watch getting its soul collectively sucked up by so many people out to document the moment. Recently, I reveled in watching the comic John Oliver cheerfully berate an audience member who was filming Oliver's stand-up routine on his iPhone. "What?" Oliver demanded, interrupting his routine to face the bright blue glowing light in the audience. "Is now not good enough for you?"

I confess I've been tempted to do the same, particularly when it comes to places I love. There are few things that make me happier than wandering the streets of Dublin, and once or twice I've been so taken with the view from the quays that I've filmed the length of the Liffey and the parade of blurry strangers tromping over the Ha'Penny Bridge, just so I could take a piece of the experience home with me. The re-watching, alas, is a poor copy of the real moment, and I find that my sketches and notes, with all their messiness and flaws, capture the feel of city better. (And nothing beats the moment itself.)

But I have to change my view on this a little after finding something cool on the interwebz: an interactive YouTube clip that takes you on a drive through the streets of Dublin. Driving in Dublin is not something I have any particular wish to do (give me feet or bicycle wheels any day), so maybe that's the salvation: I have no romantic notions to be quashed. Anyway, I found a neat little clip that takes you past D'Olier Street, where you can just barely make out the location of today's number (on your far left at :29). To my delight, the meandering route then snakes around to College Green, where you can see the bookstore where I used to work at the end of the street at 1:06. There's a whole bunch of videos in the series, and as you're watching you can click on the screen and go to other clips, essentially taking yourself on a mini drive through the dear dirty city.

Inevitably, more than five minutes of this sort of play would probably lead me into a depression (poor copies make me long for the real thing), but I still think it's a pretty cool concept. Curious? Go ahead and take the drive yourself.

#22: Playing the Building

Battery Marine Terminal, NYC

A few years ago, I got to participate in the half-art installation, half-mad scientist's experiment that was David Byrne's Playing the Building. For this piece of public art, Byrne (musician, urbanist, bike fanatic, and everyone's favorite Talking Head) infiltrated an abandoned maritime warehouse in lower Manhattan, then turned the building into a huge, clanging musical instrument -- all controlled by a single organ hooked up to various bits and pieces of the building itself. The space itself was haunting and beautiful: crumbling industrial pillars, concrete floors, high ceilings, and shafts of sunlight illuminating the room in great swathes of light and shadow.

Then I sat down at the control panel: a wooden organ rigged with cables and gauges that stretched out to all corners of the vast room. Press a middle C and a hammer clanged a distant radiator. Play an A chord and listen as a deep rumble filled the space. An experiment in sound-as-architecture, Playing the Building also had a deviously simple concept: invite anyone to walk in off the street and participate in the play. Today's 22 was snapped just outside the Battery Marine Terminal on the day I went to the exhibit. When I look at it, I can still hear clanging water pipes and humming ceiling beams.

An abandoned maritime warehouse as musical instrument? Yeah. I could get into that.

Why thank you! Don't mind if I do.

#90: 90 Paces, Collins Barracks

Collins Barracks, Arbour Hill, Dublin

All throughout the courtyard of the Collins Barracks, you'll see these hand-painted numbers on the walls. Near the entrance, the signs on either side read 100 PACES, and the numbers count backwards from there: 90, 80, 70, and so on. Back when the barracks was occupied by the British army, the numbers were used to train soldiers in rote military drills, but after the fight for Irish independence, some prescient soul must've tipped them off that Ampersand Seven was coming 'cause they vacated the barracks but left me the numbers. Thanks, Irish army!

The Collins Barracks now holds the decorative arts wing of the National Museum, but it's also a pretty good place to sit in a courtyard, take a couple pictures, and eat a croissant smuggled from your hotel, just in case you were wondering.

The barracks, built starting in 1701 with bits and bobs getting added on throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, is just about the oldest building in Dublin, second only to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. If you've ever seen the film Michael Collins, or anything else about the history of Dublin and the fight for Irish independence, then -- well, let's be real here. You can probably barely see any of these old buildings through all the continuous gun smoke and heavy whiff of history.

In 2006-2007, the courtyard of the barracks was also home to a site-specific art piece by Sean Taylor called 100 Paces, which invoked the long-past military drills and filled the square with sound and choreography. I wasn't there to see it, but through the magic of the internet, a little morsel of this public art remains.

It's definitely worth a look around. I'm usually too busy haunting the courtyard to remember to ever go inside. But next time I'll have to take those extra 90 paces.

#101: Stargazing, Temple Bar

Temple Bar, Dublin

A strange mural carved with names of constellations and shades of gray. Andromeda. Pegasus. Canis Minor. Deep crevices and odd dots. Curious ridges and swirls. Cryptic hieroglyphs and ancient Runic imagery. It's street art, which means you can touch it, pass it every day, trace your fingers over it.

This part-mystical, part-astronomical mural is one of my favorite things in the city -- whimsical yet grounded in grids and maps, a sort of a photographer's black hole. Start snapping pictures and you're stuck there for hours. I am absolutely in love with this mural and have been trying to track down the name of the artist who created it. Anyone on my Dublin street team know anything about this? If so, would you be kind enough to leave a comment and let me know? Thanks -- you're a star.

Yeah, I hear those voices too.

#138: In Your Cities Numbers Will Rot

Boerum Hill, NYC

This one's been festering in the collection for awhile, and I'm glad to see it's held together long enough for me to post it. The scenic decay of today's #138 makes me pretty psyched to check out this Anselm Kiefer documentary that's finally come to New York after I read a glowing review in the Guardian last year that taunted my appetite. The film is called "Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow" and it was directed by Sophie Fiennes. What you really need to know about my relationship to Anselm Kiefer is I'm so obsessed with his strange and beautiful work that I once went to Montreal for a weekend in the middle of February so I could see an exhibition of his. Never been colder, and seldom happier.

#196: Tapestry

U.N. Building, NYC

#233: Dublin City Logo: Three Castles, Eight Ways

Phibsborough, Dublin

The iconic logo of Dublin city -- three turrets on fire -- deserves its own makeover column. The logo is everywhere you go in Dublin: in particular, most lampposts carry the logo at the base, some painted in full color, others glazed over with silver. The three flaming turrets underwent a major makeover in 2002, when the Dublin Corporation (or "Corpo") changed its name to Dublin City Council. The three fiery turrets, often interpreted as Dublin's resilience under siege, were tamed, domesticated, and voila, three simplified, space-age, floaty-looking castles took over. Call it Celtic Tiger optimism, call it a minimalist aesthetic, or just call it identity crisis: this, they said, would be the new look. But brand loyalty, hundreds of years of history, and makeovers are hard to reconcile, so meanwhile, the three castles pop up all over the city in all sorts of guises. Here's a sampling:

Dublin City Council offices, Wood Quay

City Hall, Dame Street

Beal Tuile (fire hydrant), Dublin 4

Dustbin, Upper Grand Canal Road

Lamppost with graffiti, Merrion Square

Dublin Steam Packet Company logo

Merrion Square, Dublin

#244: Saltlands Sessions

Saltlands Studio, DUMBO, Brooklyn

Down in the mines where the sun doesn't shine . . . It's eleven hours into a recording session with Balthrop, Alabama deep down in a DUMBO basement bunker and while we haven't seen the sun all day, here in Saltlands it's warm and cozy. Pizza boxes, wine glasses, Hammond organs, and shouts and hollers. The energy here is high and the music so good it makes me long for superlatives not even invented yet. I asked Michael Arthur, our resident artist, to sketch today's number. His creations are fluid and magical and generally I'm too busy stomping on stage squeezing my squeezebox to be able to see the drawings projected on stage behind us, so I consider this a gift.

You can check out more of Michael's drawings at his blog, Just Drawn That Way, a trove of drawings and reflections both in New York and on the road. His work is improvisational and a direct response to the live music and performances he witnesses. In a couple months, I'll have the soundtrack to this number, but for now -- enjoy. Time to break out the bourbon. See you on the other side.

#298: Rejection Letters

My inbox, Brooklyn

You know what I didn't have for today? A new picture of a #298 for my number line. But I did have this -- a rejection letter for my novel! It was just sitting there in my inbox, doing nothing productive but compounding my feelings of self-doubt, despair, etc. When it could be doing something really useful instead, like making itself into a guerilla art project.

Rejection letters. Every writer who submits work to something other than their flash drive gets them. It's not unique, though I imagine we all have our own ways of dealing with the rejection. I've watched the Dylan Moran video so many times that I probably account for 5% of the 143,498 hits it's gotten. Oh, to have a balcony like that where I could sit and smoke so contemptuously and scenically. And the flugelhorn -- don't forget the flugelhorn!

But I don't have a balcony. I don't have a flugelhorn. And I don't even smoke. All I have is a fire escape, this stack of angst-packed Smiths CDs, and my own breath: breathing in, breathing out, keeping it all together despite the urge -- and the urge is great -- to fall apart. I also have Helvetica stickers. And red pens. Oh, do I have red pens.

I'll admit I've thought about doing something artistic with all the rejection letters I've collected over the years. And yes, I've thought from time to time how it'd be clever and ironic and therapeutic to share my apparent shortcomings to the world in some mildly creative way. Nothing overly nasty. Nothing mean-spirited or bitter. Just, you know -- a healthy grin, a virtual middle finger to stick up to the naysayers who are, after all, only trying to sell books. But I think there was always this catch: My hypothetical project would only be clever and ironic and therapeutic if I did it after I'd already gotten an acceptance letter. That way it would be safe. Then I'd have that all-important distance. I'd come to the table pre-approved, so I could feel good about all that fake self-deprecation.

What can I say? My deadline snuck up on me; I got impatient.

#329: The Wire

Tucson, Arizona

"You read this painting's composition from left to right. But you read the emotion from right to left."

There I stood, bleary-eyed and somewhat hungover, in the gallery of the Hugh Lane, an earnest voice off in the distance cravenly beseeching my attention. My head throbbing with an unnameable pain, I shuffled closer.

In search of the museum café, I had instead stumbled unwittingly onto a lecture in Post-Minimalism. I was not there for the Post-Minimalism; indeed I had not heard of Post-Minimalism until that very moment. Modern art inspires me and the Hugh Lane had been my destination before. I was not in totally uncharted waters here. But to be fair: this was a lazy Sunday. I had gone for the free Debussy concert and stayed on idly to wander the grounds. Craving a croissant and coffee after a stroll through Francis Bacon's paint-spattered, tornado-swept studio, I was ready to call it a day. Nevertheless, I found myself cocking my head like the RCA dog and bending down my ear.

"So what you see is something full of incident . . . up close!"

Full of incident? Indeed, the night before had been full of incident, spent in high spirits with a roomful of friends new and old at a pub in Stoneybatter. Consumed were several Belgian ales, dozens of conversations, and at least one homemade Rice Krispie treat. Cycling home along the quays at 2.00 a.m., a reflective belt over my overcoat, I received drunken come-ons from dim-witted lugs in speeding taxis and laughed as I failed at flipping them off, my mittens thwarting my best efforts to have the last word. Happy but decidedly worse for wear, I had dragged myself out of bed that next morning after a fitful sleep, reasoning that a bit of culture would have to be my hair of the dog.

"But backing up, we see that it becomes half atmosphere, half system."

I backed up and blinked, along with the silent majority, at the blotchy gray-white painting that hung on the far side of the room. I didn't see half system, though maybe, I thought, I could make out some atmosphere.

"Now as we move on," continued the erudite voice, "We must think in shadow."

I coughed and saw fireflies. My head was a masterpiece of ache in ten parts. Thinking in shadow was not going to be much of a problem. Still hungry for my croissant and coffee, I somehow found myself taken in by this pied piper of pithy proclamations and led out of the gallery. For reasons I couldn't fully understand -- maybe I liked big words, or maybe I really did need to see what this Post-Minimalist hubbub was all about -- I ignored my spinning head and followed the throng up the stairs. We entered an austere gallery with a single Waterford crystal chandelier where, affixed to the wall, we beheld the wire. Not a painting. Not a sculpture, not quite, and not merely a drawing. This was --

"Something so ineffable . . . so . . . semi-visible . . ." explained our fearless leader.

I squinted hard at the semi-visible. What I semi-saw was single mangled, tangled, ineffable wire, pinned to the wall, and a roomful of quirkily dressed, bespectacled spectators spectating it. All throughout Dublin, hungover revelers were edging sleepily toward their kettles and toasters, shuffling about in slippers, cracking open the Sunday paper.

I was staring at a wire.

"Richard Tuttle's wire sculptures are in stark contrast to Bacon's self-narratives. Here the artist has achieved his goal and left himself entirely out of the work. This wire is, in effect, an echo. It has undergone an entire journey from line to wire to shadow, arriving, at last, to its destination. It achieves a Zen-like evacuation of subjectivity."

As the words hung there in the air, quivering like the wire itself, I felt a sudden shock of recognition. Left himself out of the work. An echo. Thinking in shadow. A Zen-like evacuation of subjectivity. Why bejaysus, I had gone for modern art and ended up with the perfect explanation of a hangover. I suppose you could call that an epiphany.