Saturday, June 30, 2012

Limbo


Here is the dichotomy of an artist:  when a person is happy, they are usually busy, loving, living, playing; they are not creating.  However, when they are sad, here flows the endless stream of creative vision. When you are distraught, you are alone with plenty of time to make art.

Happiness explores and sadness dissects.  The former offers more 'specimens for dissection', the latter comes to a full understanding of that which it has found.

Why does dissecting a situation produce sadness?  I think any thing studied enough brings to light elements that are unexpected, unpalatable and even disgusting.  Dissection opens a concept up and exposes contradiction- indeed exposes that which makes us human.  I believe that humans have a natural tendency to lionize life, see it as invincible and incorruptible, making myths we are also making disappointment when we cannot live up to the things we have canonized as 'ideal'.  And so the arts are in a continual state of revolution.  As it should be.

  The piquant touch of a melancholy is what makes me reach out, what enchants me ... letting go, to know the perfection of possibility and chase it and lose it and lose it, to create under the stars of mischance and look forward to the morning.  Knowing that being human means hurting and lying and contradicting yourself and still living to love and offering your own.  How can a person deny that penultimate ache to the climax of life?  I paint that because I see that above all with every person I meet, but more, that they never get to the climax, like they are in a limbo, waiting, waiting, waiting, and never reaching out and taking.

Poem from Midnight Friday Night Poetry


Life Advice


First and most important

USE BIRTH CONTROL

nothing fucks up 18-24 years
of parties, art and beer
like a little hip-clinging rodent
gnawing away at all your corners
because it needs
            EVERY LAST IOTA       
                        of your attention, else
the filthy, pant-shitting hanger on
will make you wipe its ass
the drool from its gurgling mouth
FOREVER

it won’t puke in the toilet
it will rub Vaseline all over
            your record collection
break eggs on the kitchen floor
lock the babysitter in the closet
pee right in your face
            more than once

unless
you become a real
                        HEADKICK FASCIST

I mean, really, those little leaches
don’t know shit when they are born
and if you want to raise
            the cooing demon
well enough to not get stabbed
to death in a barfight
you have to disown your feel-good
“ISN’T IT CUTE”
Pavlovian drooling
and put on some third Reich boots
goose-step on its pouty face
collect its tears for making gas
buy pepper spray
and USE IT!
You’re going to have to build railroads
to Siberia and send that
barnacle germ fucking kid
            to the gulag.

That idiot parasite
            MUST BE BENT TO YOUR WILL
and you have to be ready
to “make the trains run on time”
you will embarrass yourself
in malls, at restaurants,
                        IN PUBLIC
                                    by screaming

DON’T talk with your mouth full
DON’T interrupt
STOP eating worms
STOP hitting your grandma

You will not recognize yourself
you will grow a Hitler moustache
you will perform gross medical experiments

            BLOW YOUR NOSE
            DO YOUR CHORES
            SHUT THE FUCK UP

and it will be good

because it must actually believe
that you will
KILL it

OR IT WILL LIVE WITH YOU FOREVER!

And if you don’t become Mussolini
if you get all soft on it
give it its darling way
                        RESPECT IT
you might become one of THOSE
            those horrifying mutants
with endless wallet photos
and stories about choir shows
            sports events and teeth cleanings.
Don’t make us suffer you
because you can’t think of anything
            better to do with your life
USE BIRTH CONTROL

snip your shit
pop that pill
end the plague of pussy fruit
polluting the world
            and our souls

(maybe start fixing yourself)

and that’s
all
the advice
I got
for you.