The Walls are Talking
January 11, 2009
I do not know the physics of non- living objects and how they communicate, but my walls are talking. Not only my walls, but my bureau, bookcase, curtains and bed. The floor, ceiling, window sills. The wastebasket, mirror, door knobs. There is a loud soundless vibration pulsing through my apartment. The place has a personality, and all places do. Take a moment and hear the place that you’re at. You might think that it’s a place in your mind, the way you are reacting to your environment but I suggest that it is the environment itself. It is pressing its identity on you. You and your space are shoulder to shoulder, trying to gain an edge. As Oscar Wilde said on his deathbed, looking at the sickly yellowing wallpaper, “Either this wallpaper goes, or I go.” Well, he went. He exploded, but that’s another story. The walls were closing in on him, and they can do the same to you. Alcoholics warn of geographic cures, believing that you take yourself and your problems wherever you go, and yes, you may take your problems, but you don’t take the place you came from, and that’s the whole idea. Some places just seem right and some seem wrong, especially one’s apartment or house. The houses and apartments absorb all those who went before. They contain the stains of past, or, in the case of brand new houses or apartments, the stains of the future. Don’t ask me why. Go over to a lamp and grab hold of it. It is alive with vibes. It has a temperature, a skin, an attitude. The floor rumbling up through your sneakers, is talking to you, carrying you forward, toward the bureau. You pick up a bottle of aspirin. The bottle speaks to the palm of your hand. The plastic tingles, the pills arrange. All this activity around you, in a silent space. A message in every object. The song of your space. What is it telling you?
En Route to Your Going’s On
January 11, 2009
It has been suggested that I include in my column some information about Rhode Island. Something, anything, about where I’m living. I stay inside as much as possible, but for the sake of the blog, I decided to go outside and look around.
The first thing I saw – A man in a Taurus dropping his toddlers off at a day care center. He looked rushed. He grabbed each child, one at a time, out of the back seat, and placed them on the sidewalk. Read more
How Long are You going to take it?
January 11, 2009
Your feigned Bohemianism, your gallery, coffee shop, DownCity attendance, your anti-ass-kissing lifestyle as you kiss underarms for the sake of a cause other than yourself. Do you think that nobody sees what you’re doing? Of course they do, but they’re on your side. Don’t fret. Every day that you get through without rejection or criticism is a day wasted. A day that you coped out. A day that you were less than you could be. But who’s to blame you? The tiny crumbs of mid-class comfort avail themselves, just enough warmth and tartness to lull you to sleep under your down comforter. I for one wouldn’t rock the boat. I’d do as you’re doing. Pretend. Play the rebel but keep your mouth open and smiling, ready for another meal. We are led by our limbic regions, and therefore choose survival over truth. Let somebody else get assassinated. Not a bad idea, if you fess up to it instead of continuing to consider yourself an outsider and worthy of accolades. What makes you better than the radical right christian murderers? Nothing. In fact, you’re meak and slimy compared to the Fundamentalists. Your detachment kills as many people as their fanaticism. You are the mirror image of hell and your consistent angst meter proves it. If you are like me, your excuse is sensitivity. You can’t deal with the pain. Instead, you cop a plea and make safe. You, like me, want the applause without the high wire walk. And so, here we are, entrapped together in mediocrity, soothed to sleep by our denial and rationalizations. After all, we say, I’m an artist. After all, we say, I don’t work for The Man. After all, we say, I contribute. But it all comes down to a unrestrained vanity of purpose – an absolute sham. How strong, the denial of those creative. How simple and base the denial of the left-hemisphered. It is a slimy dance around the WaterFire, as we all struggle to achieve nothing except recognition and a minimum wage. I am surprised that I have sold out for nothing.
The Gypsy in My Soul
January 9, 2009
As the recession deepens and job losses mount, I am entertaining my artist friends. I’m not working so I have lots of free time between reading, painting, walking Howard, writing and drinking. Having lived close to the edge for years, the economic melt-down feels like another day in paradise. The paradise of reality. I was tired of being a dancing monkey in fur for the Bourgeois. It’s nice to take a long break and focus on entertaining my constituents and friends privately. Who needs a nightclub or restaurant to have fun? They’re all going under anyway. Why demand employment and add insult to injury? The best thing I can do for the economy right now is not look for a job. We artists are in a good position now. We don’t have any debt because we never had any credit. We know how to live on 5,000 dollars a year, maximum. The only big change I’ve had to make is in the quality of cheese and wine for my soirees.Believe me when I tell you that the best part of your life is about to begin. Stop crunching numbers and face the music. Find out what you really wanted to do with your one and only life and do it. You might have to sell that antique candy dish, but did you really need it?
“No cares, no strings…. My heart has wings…
If I am fancy free and love to wander, It’s just the gypsy in my soul”
January 9, 2009
Why is this painting worth 3,400 dollars?
January 5, 2009
It isn’t, because I painted it…. but all my artist friends have gallery openings and the price tags on one of their paintings is equal to the money I earn singing in clubs for a year. Product! Product! Product! Hype! Hype! Hype! I started painting because I couldnt afford to buy a painting. I love the look of an oil painting in a room. It immediately transforms your living area into a museum, a gallery, a sanctuary of intelligence, a diversion from the base. I did not understand art until I started to make art. I also began to understand God. God doesn’t often mix his paints. He lets them run into each other, haphazardly. Whenever I made a mistake during my painting it looked real, like real life, life a real meadow or forest or mountain. When I painted a mountain as I saw it, literally, it looked like a caracature (sp) of a mountain. Is God an amateur? That would explain a lot. In fact, it would explain everything immediately. 
Recent Video
Featured Article:
Dumb- Ster
The cop looked in the dumpster and noticed a picture of his wife. He had just received a complaint from the Olympic Sports store that someone had dumped bags of garbage in their dumpster. That someone was me. I’d cleaned out a few drawers of hometown memories that morning, – high school notebooks, graduation pictures, diplomas, clippings and headed into what I thought was a free-for-all dumpster tucked behind a strip mall. After I threw the bags into the dumpster I took a walk with the dog and when I returned to my car I was met by the policeman and the assistant manager of the Olympic Sports store. Read more »