02 Jul 2011

'Flakey' at JB JURVE, Los Angeles

Flakey : Wayne Atkins, Jason Hwang, Emily Steinfeld, Bobbi Woods 
June 4, 2011 – July 18, 2011

You are a natural character; you're an incredible flake. But that's a gift. Some guys spend half their lives trying to invent something like that. You walk into a pool room with that go-go-go, the guys'll be killing each other, trying to get to you.
Eddie to Vince in The Color of Money (1986).

The flake's natural gift is the lure of a character who is all surface. Trying to fathom the flake is like trying to fathom the ethers above. The flake's ambition is extension. Vince's go-go-go keeps him spread thin. Dispersal is key to his flow. Like that other filmic flake Holly Golightly, Vince's talent as a hustler depends on a clear-eyed acceptance of the economy of mutual exploitation. The flake is too much of a stylist to be a moralist, and too much of an improviser to be a strategist.

Flakiness is not malevolent, just inconsiderate. The flake does not hold grudges. To defy gravity Vince and Holly require a buoyancy that is immune to resentment, their density is their destiny. Reversals are occasions for moving on, toward the next updraft, the essential quality of flakiness is lightness, which allows the flake to stay almost continuously atomized. Thus, the flake knows to travel without baggage and to the extent, which oblivion makes possible, without history.

The flake is too much of an inventor to be a historian. History is for those who look back. The flake knows well enough to avoid becoming outmoded. What to others may appear as negligence and even profligacy is the secret of the flake's mobility. The flake's effervescence is the momentum of its force. This bubbly mixture of the familiar and the unknown produce desire. Desire, in all the infinite variety of idiosyncrasy, is the flake's radiant substance.