Angels and Aliens, an interview with: Christian Michael Filardo

The truth is out there

To walk around Bushwick with photographer Christian Michael Filardo is to truly see all that Brooklyn has to offer. What I mean is that when I’m with Christian, wandering the neighborhood we both call home, we’ll be talking, and then, all of a sudden, they’ll be 10 feet behind me snapping a pic of a funky van with a photo of a sunset printed on its back. Or, on a path I trudge each day to get to the subway, they’ll see a keyboard caught in the barbed wire of a fence and immortalize it with a click. They home in on the ordinary and make it extraordinary in a flash. They elevate street detritus from junk to treasure through their washed-out yet vibrant film photographs.

And yet, Christian is more than a talented pair of eyes; they are a polymath: an artist, musician, poet, and friend. (Who says being a friend isn’t an art?) Christian is the life of the party and the party itself. They bring a gusto to whatever they do, including their most recent book of photos, The Purple Pill, which features an action shot of a falling Jenga tower, a gravestone that reads “Dance,” and, of course, an alien. Support their work and read our conversation below. (Their show at Baba Yaga gallery in Hudson, NY opens July 8; The second issue of Peace on Earth poetry journal (featuring a cringe piece on from me?) will debut at the Printed Matter / St Marks x 8-Ball Community’s East Village Zine Fair on Saturday, June 18.)

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Me: So what’s been on your mind lately? 

Christian: What has been on my mind? I’ve been obsessing over alien contact and NASA hiring a bunch of theologists anticipating alien contact this year. I started obsessing over aliens and angels being the same thing and the fact that angels could potentially be the original aliens. That’s what’s really been on my mind a lot. I’ve been going way deep into all sorts of random rabbit holes around all sorts of different spiritualism—a lot based in Christianity, but based in other world religions, too. 

Me: Have you been watching a lot of History Channel documentaries. 

Christian: Oh, my god. Some. I’ve been watching talking heads on YouTube. Dudes like analyzing all sorts of random shit. I went into some deep hole on Shintoism.

Me: What’s that?

Christian: That’s an ancient Japanese religion that ran parallel to Buddhism. It’s mostly popular in Japan and was centralized around the samurai. There’s interesting shit going on: disembodied voices and spirits coming into existence. It’s very, I don’t want to say folklore because that sounds demeaning, but it has that edge. It’s passed down through ancestry and public knowledge. It feels like a living Japanese religion. I somehow got into that a bit and fringe Egyptology stuff. So yeah, History Channel style shit where you’re just like, “Oh, I guess I’m all into this now.” 

Me: Would you call it a conspiracy theory? 

Christian: God, I guess that’s another question: Is it a conspiracy if you believe it? I’d say it’s less so conspiracy because it’s not undoing any other fact. I think it’s like, “Well do aliens exist?” I dunno. “Do angels exist?” I dunno. “Do I want to believe they both exist?” Yeah. “Could they be the same thing?” Maybe. 

Me: You sound a lot like Fox Mulder right now. 

Christian: Oh yeah. Sick. So I’ve been thinking about that and a lot about trying to make new photographs. I’m getting ready to go to Virginia next week and trying to figure out what I’m doing with job stuff. That kind of vibe. 

Me: Directionless but hopeful. 

Christian: An endless optimist sort of thing. Trying not to let the optimist be beat down too much. 

Me: Yeah, yeah. Optimism is like almost a naivety at times. 

Christian: For sure. 

Me: So, where did this aliens and angels stuff come from? 

Christian: I just finished a series of photography books based loosely around the idea of happiness and transhumanism and I was thinking a lot about obviously biotechnology and cyborgs and stuff like that…

Me: Wait. Why obviously? 

Christian: ‘Cause the key points in transhumanist philosophy are basically that we’re all becoming cyborgs and that technology being incorporated into the body can somehow alleviate human suffering whether that’s through genome editing or implants or whatever. Do I believe that? Not necessarily. But I’m really curious about it. When I finished that [project] up, I was doing a lot of comparisons to evolution theory and transhumanism and Neanderthals and how it might have been different if Neanderthals had technology. 

Me: [starts singing] “Look out honey ‘cause I’m using technology.” 

Christian: Right. Exactly. I then got really obsessed with experience via technology and how in some instances, if it was unknown to you, that it was like experiencing what people in Biblical and modern situations describe as when they’ve seen angels. And how people become in awe and moved to a point of numbness or inability to express and basically are made useless by the presence of this being. Then I was thinking about how angels, in their depiction, often look identical and then I started to think about that and the alien abduction stories I’ve heard. “The grays.” This kind of shit. So I was like, “Oh, that makes sense.” Then I started to get pretty conspiracy about it where I was like, “What is like that in human time now?” And I was like: the uniform. People who prescribe to a uniform in their act of labor. And then I was like, “Well, are laborers and workers angels?” I haven’t really fleshed out that idea too hard but it’s definitely a disparate connection I’m searching for right now. And somehow intertwining Communism into that. 

Me: In a percentage, how serious are you about all these theories? 

Christian: Serious enough to talk about it in conversation. I’m really curious. I’m a person who feels like they’re living when they’re learning and when I’m not, I feel very depressed. If these theories were to be untrue, that’s fine. Honestly, great. I couldn’t care less if they’re real or fake. What I’m interested in is how we can use these abstract concepts in a visual or written language to think persistent, interesting ideas. That’s why when I heard that NASA was bringing in these theologists I was like, “Oh, that’s really fucking crazy.” ‘Cause we’re a science-based society, right? We back everything we believe with science. And then to be at such a forefront of technology and so far into the future and then be like, “Actually, just in case, let’s get these weird spiritual dudes in here in case we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. In case some of the old scripture they know about is actually what’s up.” I find that to be very human. I think, in a lot of ways, that’s what my visual art and writing is: just a search for humanity. Trying to find and understand being a human. We understand that by reaching beyond ourselves and I think angels and aliens are the most beyond. There’s no base. No one knows. 

Me: Do you think that no one knows or do you think that it’s just not public information? 

Christian: I think probably a little bit of both. Maybe someone has some vague idea but I don’t think anyone has any real factual idea. Whoever thinks they know really has no idea what the fuck is going on. 

Me: I believed in aliens until Donald Trump became president ‘cause there’s that book of secrets they give each president. If there were aliens, on day 1 Trump would have been like, “Check this out.” Posting screenshots on Twitter. 

Christian: Big news. Huge news. There’s aliens. 

Me: And I’m naming one of them Secretary of State 

Christian: And then the Blink-182 dude is all up in his DMs. Love pop-punk, though. 

Me: Didn’t NASA say aliens are real and that was why Tom DeLonge was in the news? [Ed: Apparently no] 

Christian: I think to some extent they’ve said they’re real. They definitely say something else exists. But I think the NASA definition of aliens is very vague. 

Me: A life form. 

Christian: Any sort of life form. 

Me: There’s like these microscopic things on Mars…

Christian: That could have once lived. Yea. 

Me: But that’s enough that it’s kinda crazy. 

Christian: It’s totally crazy. I believe in other planes of existence, too, so it’s like, “Who knows what’s going on outside of Earth on other planes of existence?” 

Me: Yeah, there’s another plane of existence where you and I are billionaire rivals. 

Christian: But we still have this conversation but it’s like talking about something crazy and it’s recorded on something that doesn’t exist in our world. 

Me: It’s a lizard head. 

Christian: Yeah, exactly. 

Me: So back up a bit. You were saying something about your poetry practice in conjunction with this belief that…do you remember what we were saying? 

Christian: Probably trying to understand humanity…

Me: Is that what you do when you write? Humanity as a whole? 

Christian: My positioning within it. Ideally, I’m writing from personal experience but also writing from a perspective that there’s some universality to it. It’s corny but I think all poetry to some extent is either about love or death, which I think are two huge obviously overarching matters. It can be in a very abstract way, but that’s kind of what I’m reaching for every time. If I finish a poem and it’s not about either, I’m like “This really doesn’t matter.” Even if it has some good shit in it. If it doesn’t reach deeply into one of those subject matters, I’m less interested in it. Where does it put the piece of writing within mortality or humanity? I feel like art is very mortal. If we were immortal, art would be pointless. It wouldn’t exist. There’d be no value. 

Me: Wait, why? 

Christian: Because if you can endlessly make things, if you could exist forever, what is the point of making an object that lasts? What’s the point of producing? Why produce if you can just keep producing? If you have all the time to make what you want forever, ad infinitum, why even bother? 

Me: I do think creating helps you live longer. 

Christian: That’s definitely true. 

Me: I’m thinking about Jasper Johns being 91 and he goes to the studio every single day. All these old poets and artists out there who are still creative. They have a purpose. I think what I’m trying to say is similar to what you’re saying, which is…

Christian: If they lived forever, they’d do something else. 

Me: I don’t know that I believe that, though. I read that Louise Bourgeois said, “Artists aren’t made; they’re born.” 

Christian: That’s interesting. 

Me: What do you think about that? 

Christian: I kind of agree. It depends a lot on the person interpreting what they’re experiencing as art but I think, idk, it’s funny right? I’m into sports and I think of certain athletes as their own types of artists in a way. If we’re thinking of art in a way that it’s to be really deft at a specific skill that you do so well that it’s beyond acknowledgment. To be so good at something one cannot but help but acknowledge your ability within the realm, then yes. 

Me: I agree with that but I think it’s most true of boxers. 

Christian: Yeah, boxing is the sweet science, dude. I grew up watching boxing with my dad and I still watch it today. Those dudes are methodical and their minds are wild. They’re getting knocked around and perceiving so much information and moving somehow gracefully while on the edge of what could be death. That’s really wild. I think she’s probably right. Artists are probably born. I feel like you can train yourself to be one but I think there’s a certain amount of turmoil or suffering that one probably has to overcome to become an artist. It’s a path you’re existing upon whether you want to or not. And I think that’s accurate and interesting.  

Me: Sometimes I wonder if I could trade my poet’s temperament for some sanity, would I give it up? 

Christian: Yeah, I guess the question is, “What would you do with the sanity?” 

Me: Get a marketing job, get $100k a year, be financially stable, how does that sound to you? 

Christian: It’s funny because my brother is an artist who turned in the artist dilemma for stability and is a specific type of construction guy now where he designs and builds data centers. He’s making good enough money. He’d do well here. 

Me: Where is he now? 

Christian: He’s in Iowa but he moves all around for it. In a way that’s its own instability. He is all over the place. He just interviewed for job upstate. It’s funny. I think I know so little about what stability in my adult life looks like. I had a very stable family situation so I can speak to that but I’m too all over the place. As you know, I’m jobless right now

Me: Shame shame 

Christian: The idea of getting a 9-5 is so intense feeling. 

Me: We both just have all this freedom. 

Christian: Yeah dude and sacrificing the freedom for money is so something I don’t want to do. 

Me: Last night I was lamenting to Julia that I feel like a free-range chicken. I think I have all this freedom but they’re gonna chop my head off soon and I just don’t know it. 

Christian: Yeah, yeah. Fuck. I think that’s why I was really depressed yesterday. I was just like…

Me: Was there something in the air? 

Christian: There always is. Everyone’s always depressed at the same time. 

Me: It’s the weather, too. 

Christian: The weather is biting. 

Me: I went out and my hands were coming off. I felt like I could pull them off. They were freezing. So what happened yesterday?

Christian: I moved here seven months ago and lost my main contract job. I’m living off of my art right now and have been for a couple of months. And that’s cool. It’s a nice accomplishment. But it’s not stable. As an artist, you have to always think about how you are also a product. It’s a bummer. I don’t make art to be a product; I make art because I’m exploring an idea I’m interested in. Having to figure out how to monetize that to pay for my apartment in Bushwick is like, “Dude what the fuck?” I’m from rural Arizona. A beautiful place. I just moved here from Richmond, which is a beautiful place and a cheap place. I could live there. I could have a huge bedroom and a studio space for like $500 bucks. I think about that and I’m like, “I could just go do that.” But there are so many opportunities in New York. I don’t even know really what that means. But it’s this vague sort of kernel of hope. It’s so much more sizable here that it feels like, “Oh, I should try to figure this out.” 

Me: Do you want to do some early life stuff? 

Christian: Oh, yeah, sure. What do you wanna know? 

Me: Oh, you know, “Where were you born?” “What was your early childhood like?” 

Christian: I was born in Tarrant County, Texas in this town called Grapevine, which I guess is now a suburb of Dallas. But I never really lived there. I was there until I was nine months old and then we moved to the Chicagoland area in this Northern suburb up there called Barrington. And then when I was three, we moved to Beijing, China for my dad’s work. I lived there until I was six. And then after that we moved to the Philippines. I was there from six years old to eight years old. 

Me: Do you remember this stuff? 

Christian: I remember the Philippines pretty well and I remember a little bit about China, but not much. 

Me: What’s something that stands out? 

Christian: When we lived in China, it was 25 years ago, so it was still very post-Communist. Lots of coal burning. I have asthma and it’s because of the air quality there. People were really friendly. I remember really liking it as a child. I went to this school called the Western Academy of Beijing and it was really international and kids from all over the world were there. It was good for me, whatever that means. My brother and my mom both speak fluent Mandarin because of it. Coming back to America was very weird because I didn’t understand…

Me: It wasn’t your home.

Christian: It wasn’t my home and the social aspects of American children were so different. I remember when I was a kid, we didn’t have fast food or American chain restaurants and shit like that. 

Me: So you were just in Chili’s losing your mind?

Christian: Dude yeah totally. When we moved back to America, I was like “What the fuck is this? I can get chicken tenders and a milkshake. What the fuck?” Freaking out. 

Me: How do you think that time abroad has influenced your current life path? 

Christian: I think it’s influenced it in the sense where it’s at least made me think like literally anything is possible. Anything can happen to you. You can suddenly be in one place and then in another place. I think it’s really made me amenable to social situations. I’ve moved every three years of my life in a major way and that’s crazy. A lot of people have friends from their childhood and my oldest friends are from high school. I don’t remember any peer from a time when I was like 12. 

Me: If it makes you feel any better, I don’t really have any chums from that age either. 

Christian: Yeah. 

Me: I have one friend whose wedding I went to who’s my friend from high school / lower school. But otherwise, so many of them went down the normie path. People who are still friends with their old middle school pals either got lucky and that person’s also a weirdo now or they’re obsessed with the longevity. People love to be like, “We’ve been friends since we were in diapers.” But it’s like, “Do you like each other still?” 

Christian: “What do you guys talk about?” 

Me: Or do you just hang out out of obligation once every three months…

Christian: At the bar. … I like having grown up in an international way. I think it’s made me down for a lot more shit. I’ll pretty much do anything as far as like social situations go. I don’t have any sort of cultural boundaries. I think that’s what attracts me to images and poetry. I’ve been reading a lot of those Ugly Duckling Presse translations and I’m like, “Oh dude, this is relatable. We’re all on this fuckin’ rock and we speak different languages. How stupid is that?” 

Me: What draws you to the translations? Is that a fascination of yours or have you just been trying to explore a little bit? 

Christian: Being mixed-race and being monolingual feels like a curse in a way. I speak English. We were talking about it earlier but it’s like having diasporic languages in your bloodline that are both dying…

Me: For context could you…

Christian: Oh yeah, I’m half-Irish half-Philippino. Irish-Gaelic and Tagalog in the Philippines are both being eradicated by English. There’s definitely a level of shame in not knowing my ancestral languages and also a level of, “Well, if I just tried to understand as many cultures as possible maybe I can like compensate for that chain.” 

Me: It’s very easy to read John Berryman and Adrienne Rich and Philip Larkin (although he’s British) and get the same perspective. It’s cool to pick something up from Argentina or Japan that will give me a different perspective. 

Christian: The influence of American poetry is very broad. I just finished reading this Slovenian avant-garde poet’s book called [MOSS & SILVER by Jure Detela]. He talks a lot about space and nature and mortality and all these things that I’m interested in but the way he’s wording things, especially in the translation… He has this poem about ion and the ion existing everywhere and not wanting to be everything and I was like “Dude that’s fucking amazing.” He’s Slovenian and he’s writing in the ‘80s so it’s like post-Soviet Union and I’m like, “Strictly this guy could write this.” As someone who is interested in disparate shit like that like, [does silly voice] “Aliens, angels.” I’m also really into stuff like that where it’s like he’s taking a very banal, scientific subject and he’s beautifying it in this weird way. 

Me: In China, they have tens of thousands of more words than we have in the English language. And I’m like “Whoah, that’s this whole other universe.” We don’t even need to think about different planes of existence because…

Christian: They exist.

Me: Yeah, I always think about how if you really just hate your life, instead of jumping off a bridge you should just move to like Portugal or Spain. Maybe that’s just as stupid as jumping off a bridge…

Christian: I feel like what you’re speaking to is that borders are fucking bullshit. 

Me: They are bullshit. As much as I hate borders and want to abolish them, there is something that you have to contend with, which is—while I don’t think in any way you’re advocating for nationalism—”How do you keep a culture as a demarcated idea without borders?” Even with that thought experiment, I’d always say abolish borders. O.K. you probably don’t need borders. That’s probably a sophism because even within the borders, like in New York think of SoHo culture versus Lower East Side culture versus Bushwick culture. (A friend once said to Julia, “You look Bushwick cool but not Lower East Side cool.”) 

Christian: That’s pretty amazing. I feel like that discrepancy has a lot to do with class or wage. Wealth. Yesterday night—I live on Evergreen and it’s a pretty bumping street, there’s always people walking around and talking—and yesterday I heard a guy with a thick, thick Cockney accent talking on the phone and I was like, “There can’t be a Cockney guy out there.” And then I was like, “Well, we’re in New York, there could totally be a Cockney dude out there.” And then that’ll be mixed with…my whole block is Puerto Rican mostly so on the street I hear mostly Spanish. So it’s like wild. 

Me: And the music too, no?

Christian: And they have the domino game out front there. It’s just lit.  

Me: When I lived closer to you on Stockholm and Evergreen, whenever I’d leave my window open in the Summertime I’d just hear clacking. I’d look out the window and it’d be all the dudes chilling playing dominoes on a table. 

Christian: Some dudes are making money out there. 

Me: That’s why they’d always yell. I loved it. It was part of the atmosphere. Part of the DNA of this city. 

…….

Christian: People love to say America’s a sham, it’s a piece of shit country, but as someone who grew up in some pretty weird situations and places where we didn’t have hot water and shit… The world has a lot to offer and Americans don’t understand how good they have it. I’m not proud to be an American or patriotic or anything but what I do know is my dad sacrificed a lot to put me into this country. I try to recognize how grateful I am and understand that a lot of people are like, “Fuck capitalism, fuck capitalism.” And it’s like yeah fuck capitalism but we live in it, dude. We have to play by those rules until we don’t live in it anymore. And we can want to not live in it—I don’t want to live in it—but I think a lot of people are just like, “I’m not gonna live that way.” But sorry dude, you are. The global function is that way. I’m not trying to get political. 

Me: When did you first get into photography? 

Christian: It’s crazy. I’ve been photographing for over a decade now. It’s hilarious to think about. It makes me feel old. I photographed in high school but I think I first seriously got into photography when I was in college and studying under this guy Mike Lundgren. I owe a big part of my photographic career to him. I doubt Mike is going to read this but he was such a sunnovabitch. The class was like, “Come to class with 200 black-and-white 4x6’s and we’re gonna put them out on the table.” And how he’d do it is he’d just look over them and he’d take the ones he didn’t like and throw them on the floor. And he would just remove them. He was throwing shit you spent time making. It was wild to see. And very visceral and probably unnecessary but for me what separated him was 1) his art is fuckin amazing and 2) he had fuckin taste and knew how to put his money where his mouth was. He would rip apart so many people’s portfolios but when someone did something right or something looked good he would very much acknowledge it. Having that class with him was really when I began to take photography seriously. And then I really got into making photographs in a real way when I moved to Baltimore ‘cause I went to school for performance art.

Me: Really? I didn’t know that. 

Christian: Yeah. It was technically called intermedia art with a focus on performance. When I moved to Baltimore right after college, I didn’t know really anyone. I was doing a lot of music and playing out a lot but not really in a performance mindset. I’d never truly fall into one again. I haven’t done a real performance since I left school. 

Me: What type of performances were these? 

Christian: A lot of it was performance for the camera. Doing bodily stuff. All sorts of endurance things. It was almost cliche. 

Me: Could you give me an example of one thing that you did? 

Christian: I wrapped my body in Saran Wrap and then attempted to get out of it once I was fully wrapped. I was immobile in this Saran Wrap. My arms were inaccessible. It was basically me struggling. I did tons of stupid stuff. Like sitting in public and putting tons and tons of hair gel in my hair until it was getting all over me. Disgusting body shit. There was some very comedic jester-like quality to the art I made in school. 

Me: Do you think you still have a sense of humor in your work? 

Christian: Yeah, definitely. Much more subtle. I really like funny people. And funny art. A lot of people are like, “Funny art — can’t take it seriously.” But actually, you can probably take it more seriously. If someone is willing to be funny, I know they’ve experienced pain. I think humor comes from pain and that’s interesting. 

Me: All my favorite artists have a sense of humor about themselves. … What draws you to photography? 

Christian: There are a lot of things. One of them that I always think about is having an appreciation for painting and not having a heavy desire to be a painter. 

Me: That’s really interesting. Where does your appreciation for painting come from?

Christian: When I was a kid, my mom used to take me to a ton of art shows. We went to see a Manet and Monet show that was one of the first experiences I really remember. It was the bridges and the lilly pads and shit. I’ve always been around painters. I like painters as people. Whenever I go to bigger museums, I’m always attracted to the paintings and find a way of spending the most time with them. There’s so many different elements to them, like surface, texture, the visual imagery. Is it abstract? Is it not? What’s the scale? What are the colors they’re using? 

Me: What aspect of it is most intriguing to you?

Christian: I really think that painting can do a lot with surface and material that is really curious. I think what I find interesting about painting is it’s being birthed from your world. You could make a realist painting and it’s still from your world. There’s nothing “real” about it. A lot of people say photography isn’t real. It’s light on gelatin that’s mimicking reality and it’s like, “Well, yeah, but the way we’re perceiving it is much more “real” than painting.” What’s most interesting to me about painting is where one can go into a painting. Photography will always have people wanting to go into photographs the same way people go into paintings. People get really close to paintings. People are standing on the side of paintings. They’re moving around paintings in a way that’s very experiential. Artists lose themselves in making a painting. I think some people lose themselves making a photograph but I’d say it’s way less likely and way less believable. 

Me: Photographing is just so instantaneous. 

Christian: Yeah. I think there’s people who find a way to make it a spiritual performance. I do think of photographing as performative. 

Me: Totally. That’s what Roland Barthes says. 

Christian: Painting does that, too. 

Me: Painting is totally performative because, like you said, you’re creating your own world. 

Christian: Having something that I could do purely while I was existing is why I was attracted to photography. It could be so passive. It’s active, but “got one” *click* “got one” *keep going* *click* and who knows, it might be nothing. Most of them suck. But when you get a good it’s like, “Oh, that’s cool. That’s a good one.” This has something else. 

Me: The nice thing about photography is you can have 32 chances to do something cool. … What about your poetry practice? When did you start writing poems? 

Christian: When I was a kid, my parents had a theologist around. We had a family priest and a family psychic. My dad is a Buddhist and my mom is a Protestant and my mom used to go see this psychic a lot and she said all this shit about our family and she was like, “Christian will be a writer.” 

Me: Artists are born; not made. 

Christian: Yeah, exactly. And at the time I was like, “What the fuck? I don’t fuckin’ read. I don’t prescribe to that. I’ll never be that.” But it’s something that has haunted me pretty much my whole adult life. She said that when I was 15 and I’m 30 now and I started seriously writing three years ago and have kept doing it. Right now is the most focused my writing practice has ever been. I’m not taught. I don’t really know what the fuck I’m doing. Writing is a taste thing for me. When I like writing or when I like something I read, I like it, you know? So, there’s that. That’s why I started writing. Because this fuckin’ random lady that my mom used to go to for advice about our future and family well-being said that I’m going to be a writer and one day I was like, “Maybe I should just try.” 

Me: Wow. And what’s your practice like these days? 

Christian: I try to write a poem every day. My morning ritual is: I wake up in the morning, I make coffee, and I read. I read some poems, it can be anything, I just finished Jack Gilbert’s collected works today. I read for 30 minutes and then I’ll write until I finish a poem. They’re not always good. It’s until I feel like it’s done. I’m not a person who re-works stuff or has stuff I’m working on. We shoot them, and if they hit, they hit. If they miss, they miss, and then they go away. 

Me: It’s just like taking a photo. 

Christian: Exactly. My practices are almost the same. They exist in a similar world. Photography is very similar to poetry, the way we perceive it and the way it affects us. There’s an immediacy to both that when you’re moved or affected by it, you really feel it in a spontaneous way. They can both be about exploration. 

Me: Do you have any collections out? 

Christian: I have this absurd art book out, but I’d like to have a more proletariat collection out. I would like to figure it out but I don’t really know how or when to do that. I have a lot of poems. I have a Pages doc of every poem I’ve ever written…

Me: Back that shit up. I’ve spilled water on two laptops so I’m so scared of losing all my shit.

Christian: Hell no. 

Me: How do you measure success? 

Christian: Oh god. I don’t know. Success is horrifying, right, because it’s something that is referred to often as something someone chases

Me: Like heroin. 

Christian: Yeah, like drugs. And love. And things that fulfill us. It’s been drilled into my mind that success is something that you can make money off of, which I think is a bad way to think about it. But, I think it’s when you’re acknowledged for something you do ultimately in a simple way. If someone refers to you as Christian the painter or Christian the sculptor. If you gain the byline or whatever I feel like that’s success in some sort of way. There have been moments in making photographs or writing where I’m like, “This feels like success,” but another thing about being an artist is the work is never done. It’s why those people go to their studio every day. We’re all just chasing something. We’re all chasing this kernel of knowledge that’s obtuse and unreachable. A lot of times I’ve thought I feel successful but it’s like, “What comes after that?” In an abstract way, I feel like success is being able to be at peace. You don’t owe anyone anything; you don’t owe yourself anything. Whatever people refer to as happiness, that’s probably the closest to success for me at least. If I made something and it made me feel happy for a moment, that’s a success.