Gaston Gnefkow

The first "Californian Millionaire" died in poverty in Escondido, in 1889.
A friend of mine who happens to be the child of a winemaker offered me a job there, which I accepted because I could really use the money and it's basically just picking grapes. While my knowledge of wine is limited, Thierry is obsessed with it. His name is already a hint of his parents’ francophilia. Since he has returned from France, Thierry urgently craves to make his own wine.
Skin contact, maceration, low sulphur, low intervention, native yeast fermentation are words used multiple times in an average conversation. I don't consider this to be particularly interesting, but I like the wines he brought from Europe.

It's early evening on my fourth day in Escondido and I had to work with Joseph, who is not very talkative. We are supposed to do the gleaning on the rows that got harvested earlier today. After hours of almost no verbal interaction, he invited me to get high and I accepted the invitation.

"The first 'Californian Millionaire' died in poverty in Escondido," I told him. "When?" he asked.
"1889," I answered.

Joseph said that this fact reminded him of someone he knew from here — a then 24-year-old guy who took his own life because he was haunted by the fact that he paid for an ounce of weed with bitcoin that would be worth almost 14 million US dollars later, over 50 million today. After that, Joseph and I went back to not talking.

What is the connection he saw between those two events? What reminded him?
I asked myself over and over again while trudging through the vineyards picking leftover Viognier. Too shy to approach him on it, too high to get my mind off it, obsessed with figuring it out. Just as I was reaching the end of my row, I noticed the red sunlight fracturing through the dark fence which marked the threshold of this grape variety. I sat down, placed myself at an angle where the sinking sun became invisible and just the red enlightened square remained. The two shafts of light on the ground made it look exactly like Blinky Palermo's Schaufenster. Since Joseph and I smoked together, he really reduced his pace and I decided to sit here waiting for him to catch up. As he was getting closer, I noticed him singing...

When I got to this here country, I hadn't nary a red.
I had such wolfish feelings,
I wished myself most dead.

At length I went to mining, Put in my heaviest licks, Came down upon the boulders Just like a thousand bricks.

I worked both late and early, Through rain and hail and snow, For I was working for my Sally, And it was all the same to Joe.

I made a very lucky strike, As the gold itself did tell, For I did find it for my Sally, The girl I loved so well.

He stopped when he noticed me listening.
I knew that song — Joe Bowers goes to California mining for gold to provide for his fiancée Sally. Just after finding gold his brother writes to him that the woman he loves had a baby by another man.
"Let's wrap things up," Joseph said.

On the way back to our cabin, he told me that everybody who worked our job last year got deported, and how annoyed he is with Thierry's European wine mania, because Europeans don't care about Californian produce anymore since all the tariffs.

"He imagines himself as a visionary, some kind of pioneer, you know? But it's just a business move. He's coming back to Cali to make a fortune. I miss him in his commie phase during college," he said, and paused. “Principles triumph, they do not compromise.” 

I got the point, but it still made me cringe a little. For a brief moment, I considered explaining to Joseph that I’m always glad when someone surpasses their Marxist period—especially if their family owns vineyards in California. The shallow demand for a revolution, backed up by the obscene safety of inherited privilege. I imagine Thierry subconsciously knew it was just a political performance — aware of its own consequencelessness. And it feels as if Joseph, on the other hand, is mourning the death of utopia, while at the same time deluding himself into thinking there's hope for its reanimation. He seems to be fetishizing, instead of actively craving to disjoin an existential demand from an epistemological ruin. I didn’t want to discuss this with him and kept my mouth shut.

After a few seconds of silence, he said, “It is always language that formulates opinions, even when there are no words spoken.” That made me uncomfortably self-aware. I felt compelled to say something, so I complimented the bracelet he had on his left arm. It was thin, definitely made of real gold, and its chain pattern was reminiscent of reptilian scales.

Joseph thanked me for the compliment and told me that his father, who is a goldsmith, made it as a gift for his first birthday. We each wished each other a good night and parted ways.

Washing my hands, brushing my teeth, applying facial cleanser, washing it off, using a cream that increases the skin barrier and googling a complete sentence.
“In California you chew the juice out of grapes and spit the skin away, a real luxury.”

That’s written on a painting by Ed Ruscha, cynically quoting Jack Kerouac.
And today — today was my first time experiencing this “real luxury.” All the others do it consistently. It feels satisfying. This piece has always been one of my favorites by Ruscha, although I didn’t know the feeling nor that it was a quote. I'm looking at the painting on Sotheby’s website, which informs me that its estimated worth is 2.2 to 2.8 million US dollars. Just right now, that would be 666 to 885 kilograms of gold or 20 to 26 Bitcoin.

The first "Californian Millionaire" died in poverty in Escondido, in 1889. I am telling myself while lying on my back. His name was Samuel Brannan, a journalist and owner of the newspaper Californian Star. Brannan’s story is a capitalist fairytale that will have a contemporary finance bro drooling over his oddly tight-fitting shirt.

He accumulated his wealth by selling tools to the miners who came to California hoping to make a fortune and ended up "seeing the elephant" — meaning disillusionment, desolation, trauma.
The journalist switching pen and paper for selling picks, shovels and pans.
Disallowed to publish the gold find — he took matters in his own hands.

"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" — his forever known shout.
Running into every shop buying all the equipment and reselling it with 7500 percent profit to all the argonauts who swallowed the bait.

Selling the idea of wealth. Selling the immaterial. Selling the immaterial to a teenager. Simulated currency, imagination of a prospector, persisting psychotic imagination of would've-had wealth. Wouldn't have needed that weed. Used one of Brannan’s pans washing gold in a river on stolen land and got killed by a group of Yokuts. Mercury binding particles, poisoning their water. Speculation-induced trauma, speculation-induced death. Speculation-induced genocide of Native Californians. Learning about mining on 4chan. A letter from your brother telling you that your Sally had a baby and that baby had red hair just when you struck that gold and wanted to go home to seal the deal. Deciding that the future you missed out on because you sold too early is the only future worth living. No house in the Hollywood Hills, no house at all, not in this economy. Not just a crash but a meltdown. Could've kept friends if I quit yapping about my 14 millions. Is it better or worse that it would be 300% more by now? Timeless loss, fictional loss, a whole reality based on an unreal loss and loss of reality. Loss of the man who found his gold and would've laid it to your feet, loss of belief. Going into the basement where your father keeps his guns. Over the last 200 miles we've lost a horse, an ox and two men while no gold was found. The muzzle of the gun on the temple. Seeing the Elephant.

The first "Californian Millionaire" died in poverty in Escondido, in 1889. 29 years earlier he divorced Anna Eliza Corwin which forced him to liquidate all the money he invested in real estate. He had to cash her out on half of their holdings. Brannan lost nearly everything, opened a brewery and became alcohol- and gambling-addicted. By the time he died he had no one, they couldn’t even identify his corpse. Even the gold rush's biggest winner ended up seeing the elephant.

I am unable to fall asleep and it's not just a restless mind that is keeping me awake. It's hearing the others talking outside, especially Thierry. He's driveling about sustainability, as far as I can understand it through the wooden wall. Maybe Joseph’s points are more valid than I would've liked to admit. Just now I realized that the work we did today must've revealed something to him. Gleaning - picking up the leftovers, is usually done by people in need, as an opportunity for free food. We were just workers controlling other workers so that there would be no lost profit. I regret my lack of engagement in our conversation.

Next morning, I brushed my teeth, applied deodorant and sunscreen, and went out. I was extremely excited to talk to Joseph, just for Thierry to tell me that he quit yesterday evening, after our shift.

If it is true that "We know the world through our body, and we know our body through the world."1 Then what does it mean to leave a space? What does it mean to leave an institution? What's left at all when we walk away from each other?
I've always experienced a growing sense of numbness. Maybe as a consequence of constantly moving with my family when I was a child, moving over and over. The first time I thought I realized that someone other than me actually exists, I had to move again. I had to walk away.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, oh lord. Like the song. But is that it? You know, like that other song. Think of the image as a subject, gazing back at you. What do you get after making eye contact? You turn your head, you walk away. If you're strong now, you can make it not to turn your head to look at them again. I hope you will think about Me, it may have said. Not really in a begging way, but it still wants to make sure to let you know it needs you. Its reflection in your eyes is what makes it whole. Our reflection in your eyes is what makes us whole. This place is a We. In "The Poetics of Space" Bachelard writes that "The places in which we have experienced daydreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream."2 Considering an event like an Exhibition, this idea feels almost utopian-to serve something able to stand out amidst the overwhelming flood of information, something that lingers even after you have turned your back on it. Do you mind giving this a shot? Feeling the Images shutting their eyes behind your back while you recede? What's left of it? What's left of us?

The feeling when you walk away.