THE WAKING LIFE

JUST FOR THE RECORD, my painting is not a hobby, it's a work of pernicious desperation. And to be clear about that, allow me to put it another way. After fifty years of trench warfare, flailing, wounding and being wounded on the battlefield of words, I have chosen another weapon with which to wage battle against those who would demand from me my soul and insist upon my allegiance to any and sunder of these grotesque, viciously competitive arguments contemporary life offers. The inquisitive mind of the diligent seeker hacking through the kudzu of civilization, its sleepwalkers, and its enemies is always at peril. Whether delivered with a calm whisper or a bone-chilling rant, it's the same shouting of which side are you on? It's the same seductive shell game aimed to recruit and implicate, taking you off your own uniquely, sweat-and solace-inspired path. For what? the same old, same old, but now we are substituted a host of new partners who may or may not have one's best interests in mind as they squiggle in pursuit of their own. What rubbish! The Organization. Sanctified. Polished. Well-funded, or NOT. Either way, the trap is set before you.

Where on God's Green Acre is the DMZ in all this ? There is none. Not in one's own home. Not in one's own mind. There's always some entity ready to step up with you to the firing post or down with you in the dirty ditch as long as you agree to pursue the party line. Yes sir. Marching off as to war. Stuffed to the gills with pamphlets and profiteers piled high upon your back.

War and Peace. Brother against brother.

I may cherish and respect them both but only at arm's length. Or I may loathe them with every ounce of integrity I command, but I reject them all as tightly torqued gears of the consumer society, eager to pounce and package me with the same wrapping they adorn themselves. The anti-uniformity packaging is easily pierced with a hard look beyond the surface tension of its delivery system.

Painting, painting exactly as I do, is my own brutalized response to each and every one of them. To quote the poet of my generation, sometimes the devil comes as a man of war, but sometimes he comes as a man of peace. I ask then, where is the false consciousness of those who would portray the Luxmachina of my own aspirations as merely the illusion of a "sensitive" personal constitution?

Not even Pablo Picasso (that asshole) could be ursurped by an ideology's need for famous lynchpins and reputations in their stable of tools and weapons for further recruitment. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso explains:

"If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean."

Death may be lonely, but life among the recruiters is far lonelier. Condescension is the law. The only mass movement I am interested in, is the movement of my own mass upon the path I am already storming so as to inspire my own sense of fear, awe and love, disappointment, recovery, crass numerology, entitlement and peace.

For our dear magnificent, delirious Picasso also said, "Painting is not made to decorate apartments, it's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy." (Tery, Picasso, n'est pas officer dans l'Armee francaise, Les Lettres Francaises, March 24, 1945)

Me? I've narrowed it down to occasionally wanting to hang out and talk the talk with fellow painters. To smash the knots governing painting. That's personal. Then there's the whatnot dealers, the galleries, the special collectors. If I have any say so in my future, it is that I want to confine myself to these people. To meet the mark. That's the challenge. Global politics IS about peace. And I think I am already in that combat, and have been for all of my conscious life, with exception of playing soldiers as a kid. But that kidstuff came natural as a result of heritage and culture. Not that it's been easy. I have blood on my hands, maybe, maybe not so much, but it's a life of bruises and egos. We have ALL, each and every one of us, contributed to the crimes of our own natures. Basic sin. We've all had to be dusted off every once in a while. All that is in my blood, and by deed of hand of head. Yours too, no doubt. And as the story goes I am staging myself from a family of pioneers, kings, governors, soldiers, bankers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, numbers keepers, carpenters, peach peddlers, drunks, and now, here I am barely in my fifties, but not yet thirty, the eldest son five of a navy piss drunk carpenter and his woman, my mother, a woman trailed by a remarkable track record of dog-eared discontent which become a staple in her childrearing arsenal. Then we rock on into MY generation.

That's the narrative I am poised to paint and weave into my worldview (without appearing passè).

The world is full of stories. I am one. We are another. I don't presume to presume a lot about other people except general nicety, but how so often even that small portion of human kindness is missing. Fortunately, I have my true spruce with Liberty Sue, and a handful of nice friends these days. But friends, well, as Jim Morrison put it, he preferred the feast of friends to the giant family, yet it's been one of the twisted poverties of my own peculiar life to have found neither to be much comfort or strength, both somewhat suspect, both very competent at failing to meet fair chunks of their own words even halfway. But my own corruptions and failures and spotty loyalty (in terms of ALWAYS putting THEM first) across the tracks can't be avoided either.

Go figure. Stuck. Stuckism.

Did I fail to mention that I watched Richard Linklater's Waking Life again this morning? Tough flick. Delivers an existential punch to philosophy framers everywhere they groom themselves. Third or fourth time I guess I've watched it over the years. A tough, intelligent objectivist-collapsing device at endgame. Awesome animation technique that Linklater picked up from a few pioneers.

I'd love to be able to say I can memorize the entire dialogue, do it, and then converse dazzlingly at fashionable dinner parties all across this brave land, but I'm just a painter now, and besides, I pretty much have internalized most of the chicanery, and had done so before sitting for Linklater. But it's still a cheeky flick to check out...

Five elephant trumpets.

Then there's Martine and Norman's Midnight Movie tonight. I do very much want to go, but with Liberty Sue gone to the Florida, me in a dietary rush, so much weight to lose, so little time, I tell myself I can't afford to place myself in a jovial crowd with lots and lots of calories to be passed around, with so much studio work awaiting me. But here's Norman's great plan for tonight:

"In lieu of true independence, Martine and I have decided to celebrate films that said "Fuck you" to standard Hollywood ideals, and are hosting the first of our "Midnight Movie Madness" series. We're kicking it off with the film that has been credited as being the first movie to be intentionally shown at midnight because the distributors had no idea what else to do with it: El Topo.

"This surreal western has been listed as favorites by John Lennon (who actually persuaded a friend to buy the rights and get its first distribution in the U.S. going), directors David Lynch and Samuel Fuller, actors Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, and performers Bob Dylan, Marilyn Manson, and Peter Gabriel. It has been claimed that this movie was the beginning of Gabriel's inspiration for the classic Genesis concept album, 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway'.

So get your late night faces on and come enjoy "El Topo" with us! BYOB and snacks."

See what I mean? It sounds divine and delicious...

I'll decide later. I have a few hours before curtains.

CONSIDERING POLITICAL ART

So argues Nick222:

Actually, for reasons that I detail in a my blog, I think that Geert Wilders made a mistake by producing the film and would make another mistake by releasing it. Of course I agree that Wilders has the freedom to offend Islamic ideas and agree with him that the Koran is "a fascist book inciting hatred and violence", but (as Thoreau would say), Wilders is "hacking at the branches of evil" rather than "striking at the root."

To strike at the root (and more), I think that the ideas of C.W. Walton, Jefferson, and H.L. Mencken are crucial. Respectively they are:

"Believers are interested in fulfilling emotional and spiritual needs, not intellectual needs. In some cases, one might as well try to use reason on a dog. For many people God is primarily a warm feeling. How can one argue with a warm feeling? Arguing with someone who places reason below faith... is blowing against the wind." (C.W. Walton)

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them…" (Thomas Jefferson)

"The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe – that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent." (H.L. Mencken)

He then concluded:

Therefore, my recommendation to Wilders would be that, if he wants to help both his homeland and humanity, then he shouldn’t release his film criticizing the Koran. Not that the criticism isn’t correct, but it’ll just harden the Muslims’ bunker mentality. Instead, he should (for example) hire some competent comedians whose wisecracks would ridicule all religions, excoriate all clerics, and most importantly, get all who bought into their clerics' con games rolling in the aisles—not in some religious trance but laughing at themselves for paying fortunes, forfeiting their freedoms, for permission to live within fairy tales.

But not all people agree that chopping at the tree of religion is the intelligent thing to do. Islam is a political manifesto dressed up in the rag doll outfits of religion. We must address it the same way we addressed Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Imperial Japan—as a very dangerous political ideology that requires a thunderous defeat. Whacking at the persistent windmills of religion is not going to solve our immediate problem. Only then will the "arts of life" survive to encourage us another day.

We can an undaunted quote generator for these two gems:

Edmund Burke once wrote, "No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

And if that was not plain enough, shall we turn to Sir Winston Churchill, who observed that "When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."

GT

BERLIN GALLERY HARASSED BY MUSLIMS

A BERLIN GALLERY has temporarily closed an exhibition of satirical works by a group of Danish artists after six Muslim youths threatened violence unless one of the posters depicting the Kaaba shrine in Mecca was removed, it said on Thursday.

The Galerie Nord in central Berlin said it had closed its “Zionist Occupied Government” show of works by Surrend, a group of artists who say they poke fun at powerful people and ideological conflicts. Four days after the exhibition opened, a group of angry Muslims stormed into the gallery, shouting demands that one of the 21 posters should be removed, said the gallery.“They were very aggressive and shouted at an employee that the poster should be taken down otherwise they would throw stones and use violence,” the gallery’s artistic director Ralf Hartmann told Reuters. The Muslims objected to a depiction of the Kaaba—the ancient shrine in Mecca’s Grand Mosque which Muslims face to say their prayers—which gave a “bitingly satirical commentary against radicalism,” said the gallery in a statement.

To his credit, Hartmann has said the gallery was working with German authorities to improve security and he hoped to re-open the show as soon as possible.“It would be unacceptable if individual social groups were in a position to exercise censorship over art and the freedom of expression,” said the gallery in a statement.

It’s about time some Western artists stepped up to the plate on this issue. This is a very serious issue, and since I am in the arts myself, a humble painter in Washington, DC, I know that few "political" artists are tackling the Islamic problem with anything more than smug indifference.

In fact, just the opposite position rules. Sadly, 95% of the art being created today in this most political of cities, and I speak from the underground art movement, is frivolous and redundant, lost in fairy tales and harmless charm, and anything remotely “controversial” and it’s not anymore because how many times can Christianity or homophobia or the president be attacked in the generic way that artists depict their hyperventilated disgust with religion, sexual mores, or politics, and it still be new, iconoclastic, or controversial? But with all the world in flames and blood, hovering at the brink of financial crisis, most of the “ruthless honesty” work is anti-American at worst, anti-war (lofty) at best, and nothing is ever presented that even hints of global incrimination due the jihadists and their copious allies strutting about in shepherd’s clothing and Brooks Brothers suits.

But what can be expected otherwise? The art world, unlike the more recently abducted halls of lower and higher education, has long been the high-browed bastion of the liberal cognoscente, and today’s system of wine-tasting galleries and its stiltifying air of mass dementia is now vigorously geared to the Left.

Scandal is often the fast track in the whirl to “make” an artist, but history probably proves that this model holds only if breaking “preferred” molds. Let’s hope Berlin doesn’t bend knee to this Islamic thuggery. It will only encourage more outrage. Don’t we all deserve better than this?