Saturday, June 28, 2014

Out of This, Comes my Art...

I have no temples. I have no gods or goddesses. No leaders. The moon is a magnificent rock torn from the earth when the earth itself was a molten rock.. and little by little drifting away into space--which will change the length of our days, making the revolutions of the earth shorter and shorter, our days, shorter and shorter.

The alignment of the planets, while wonderful fun and poetically generative.. don't mean shit for our lives. Whether Mercury is perceived (and it's an optical illusion), as 'retrograde,' or not, has no influence on our physical reality whatsoever.

The wonder of the real world needs no made up shit to leave us in awe.. and rather, pulls a cheap magician's cloak over the magnificence of the universe as it is, preferring a false sense of control to our utterly helplessness before it--other than our accumulating knowledge... our only power. I say this, and this is my... not 'belief,' but understanding, and I light the candles of my Faerie alter, and the unknowalbe refusal of my brain to acceded altogether to this so called real world. Out of that, comes my art.

Friday, June 27, 2014

Annoying Submission Requirements

Dear Publisher

Why, with an electronic submission, do you ask for a limited number of pages? If you want to stop reading at 20 or 25 or 30 pages, good. Don't read any more. But if you do--it's right there. No need to ask for a second submission. And if, as in the case with my two novels, there are chapters that read as stand alone narrative short stories, chapters in modified screen play format, chapters, for lack of a better description--which are highly 'experimental.' How am I supposed to select anything close to representing the work?

The other annoying request--a synopsis. Fine, if you write a plot driven narrative novel. That's how a synopsis works--they're boiled down plot summaries, with some added comments. Like Cliff Notes. With a book radically UNlike establishment realist fiction, a synopsis is next to impossible. Thank you, but I spent 8 years writing the damn novel--I'm not going to do critical theory on the fucker. You want to know what I wrote--read it.

And if on top of that you want me to pay you to do your job as editor and publisher, 'reading fees' or whatever. Fuck off. I'm not interested, and you probably aren't either. Save us both the trouble.

#253

20x16 acrylic on canvas board

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

On Growing Old

Thinking about growing old. That I have no real models for how to deal with this. I've know some awesome, inspiring older people... but they didn't talk to me about what that meant for them. So there's a kind of void there.

I think about the posts that Kelly Coviello has been leaving. Old age is not a disease. But it shares at least as few elements... the absorption of the body into something increasingly foreign, while having to continue defining yourself by something that it both denies that, and insists on asserting its reality.

I mean, resisting the clichés.. the "age is only a number"... the youth cult crap that thinks that telling you that you look younger must be a compliment.

This is tough... cause I look in the mirror at my naked body, and I am not turned on. So I can't imagine anyone else being turned on by seeing what I see. And I am still a sexual being... so I dress to cover it over.

And when when someone says, "age is only a number" ... I think, when's the last time you wanted to fuck an old man/woman? The disconnect, on the level of sexual desire... total cognitive dissonance. And that's the least of it.

I don't think this is new...certainly when it comes to sexual desire, and being open about it. But there's so much more, and we are so cut off, generation to generation. We are not at 30 who we were at 13. We are not at 50, who we were at 30. We are not at 70, who we were at 50. This matters. This is not just personal...if you look at political history, there are generational transformations. Being able to talk about this.. cogently, critically... this matters. As what Kelley has been saying about experiencing illness, matters.

Let's try to be honest with one another about this experience of being human ... the whole range of if. Thank you, Freud, for being the first to really open up what it means to be honest, self reflectively honest.

If we can't manage it on this most intimate level, we'll never be able to make a world from our better imaginings.

#252

10x10 Street trash, ink, water color on Gessobord, for the BalletX benefit in September at the Bridgette Mayor Gallery.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Astrology, reikie, crystals & Poetry

This has been on my mind for some time. So I'm going to post this again. I really feel the need to get this out in open. On the level of science and poetry... I'm conflicted here.. not on the surface issue, not at all. I'm a science guy, first to last. But I know poets who take these ideas.. crystals, astrology, reiki... etc.. and use them to deconstruct social fascisms and open doors to rethinking received notions. I mean, I have a Faerie alter and carry a spirit stick. People love my spirit stick. They ask me about it. I say, it has powers! They say, oh, what powers? I say, would you have ventured to talk to me, sitting here on the El... if not for that stick? That's its power. How I dress, adorn myself... it's like that. I'm a science guy. And a poet. And an artist. I don't use my art to pretend to making objective claims about reality. But I do use it to challenge ... everything. but science doesn't need me to challenge its claims. It's the nature of science to always be about challenging itself. So I want to claim some outside leeway.. where I'm not challenging science or its claims, but metaphorically challenging embedded assumptions--even if I draw on the most far out spiritualist new agey bull shit. Pay attention, when you read poets. We're not stupid. We follow the news, and science. But we prefer to think outside of all boxes--even those of .. no, especially those of, established reality. But so do scientists.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

#249

18x17 Acrylic, roofing paper on Masonite

#248

17.5x12 acrylic on comp board

Sunday, June 15, 2014

#247

24x 18 acriylic on Massonite

Father's day: 1918-1988.

I read tributes to fathers, and can only feel sadness thinking about my father He was emotionally restrained, not to say repressed. His affective life was primarily through a symbiotic relationship with my mother. It wasn't that he was cold, but that he wasn't able to express it, except through a droll, ironic sense of (black) humor. I don't recall his ever telling me he loved me. We never really bonded. There were some awkward camping trips, fishing in the Ozarks. I was a puzzle to him, too much like my mother, which I think inhibited him. I imagine him squeezed between my volumnious grandfather, who everyone knew as "Papa," his athletic, musical older sister, and my mother. He never found room for his own emotional life to take root

He just didn't know how to respond. The weeks before my mother died were probably the closest we ever were--and by then, he was seriously ill. He died a year to the day after my mother's funeral. He didn't abuse me, didn't do or say things to make me feel ashamed. He liked that I wrote poetry and loved art. But from the earliest I can remember formulating such ideas... I knew that whatever I did with my life... I did not want to be like my father. I do have his sense of humor... and it's no small sense of comfort to me. Thanks, Dad... so far so good.... so far so good... so far so good

Thursday, June 12, 2014

#243

#243 28x18.5. Acrylic, 3 pieces of roofing paper on 3 pieces of Masonite