i remember where; i was living in Maine, involved w/ building a co-housing artist community. + so, i must remember when. The late ‘80s. i was going through an expressionistic phase + scribbling auras around sentiant beings in drawings. Cartoonish, to be sure. But the work was dead serious. i remembered these - but only found bad detail images of the works on paper. After Koudelka’s captivating photography. It is interesting to figure what was going on when past moments were recorded in your life — as  art is a recording of it.

i heard today via internet that Danny Kaye is only remembered by his aging audience - something profoundly sad about that, if it is true.

IDEA: Of literary devices never used.
IDEA: Nightmare projects listing themselves.
IDEA: Non-sequitur - write a story of a man flip booking through an encyclopedia or switching the tv from channel to channel.  
IDEA: A trilogy that goes together kicking + screaming.

Write about it again … you’re not done with it. 

Someone in the next room trying to get all the attention. 
My attention. 
Did you hear?
It all seems miles away.  

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.  -Picasso

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. -Crowfoot

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. -Nietzsche

It is nice, in getting mature enough to see the things you really don't have to want to do any more, certain options fade drop away + we are left w/ more focus.

A great comeback to any theory;
There are a lot of assumptions in that deduction.

Being out of context, i reckon.
When i want believe in any thing, then i may have to need to believe something-this or something-else. The world as a reaction.
A cabinet will fall if it is top-heavy, whether you believe it will or not.
i no not have to believe in physics, of course.
Physics, it is nothing personal.

i am the reaction, too.

Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention.

Ahm just saying...

Everyone wanting to make their mark aside...

If you are treading the fine between artist you may hear yourself droning,

Hey, that’s been done ... that’s not original, hey!

In contrast, as a designer, your inner voice may cheer on w/ a license to beg, borrow or steal.

HEY, I REALLY NEED THAT IDEA!

A compliment to the last manipulator, really.

Oh, he just stole from me, I steal from everybody. -Woody Guthrie

Plagiarism is basic to all cultures. -Seeger Sr.

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal. -Pablo Picasso (oh yes, even him.)

As we began a new calendar year i’m stumped to wondering how each of us have gotten this far. Really, how have we managed what we have, physically accomplishing it all, + mentally have come through the dark hall?

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, + so, i reckon we have been building our stamina all this time.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we where all going direct to Heaven, we were all going the other way... -Dickens

i’ll be on costume deadline for a while.
Not knowing if i’ll make it to the screen very often to post - but i’ll be watching you, even when you don’t hear of me.

A random memory just flew by.
Years ago i knew a woman selling fabric goods at a hip store named Poppies in Berkeley. She had this conversation w/ her roommate one night that;

Geee it was busy, we sold so many notions today.

You sell Notions?

Why yes, we do.

Notions.

Yea.

Wow... you... sell....Notions...

Obviously he was thinking on the lines of Sometimes a Great...

+ why yes, it is a burden to carry other people memories.

Okay, so here's what i wanted to ask.

Am i the only one who saw the film Where the Wild Things Are, + turned it into an Ingmar Bergman film? It really was not that big of a jump.

So, i read into things. It’s one of my faults. It’s not as though i shoot smack.

i introduced the kids to Limelight. Synopsis: A young ballerina is a mess because she can’t get her career started. Cavalero, an aging train wreck of a vaudevillian, is at the end of his. Every line seems to have weight to it, reading as Chaplin’s essay on how to live without regrets. It is an autobiographical bittersweet film spoken in a lyrical voice.

The kids had seen it three years ago but understood more this time around.  

The coming of age as a blooming metaphoric understanding. The year you realized that the scarecrow, tin man and lion ARE the farm hands. (Sorry if I just blew that for some of you.) It happens to every single child (in us all) + there is a proverbial line drawn at that time. This instance becomes a gateway drug to harder symbolism.

-Chloe + Drew quickly tracing as the writing comes up. 

Returning to Blake now + again, is re-entering the slipstream. i’m remembering part of the Four Zoas written by Willi Blake, but i need to find it … i am good at drawing, also at drawing blanks. 

William Blake 

 The Four Zoas 

-excerpt

"What is the price of Experience? 

Do men buy it for a song?

Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price

Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.

Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,

And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain. It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun

And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.

It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,

To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,

To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season

When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs.

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,

To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;

To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;

To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies' house;

To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children

While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers.

Then the groan and the dolor are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill,

And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the field

When the shatter'd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead.

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:

Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me."

Read this as a confession + an apology. 

It is poetry, it is telescoped, this is only a teensy of the work.

Heroes do not mistake apparent changlessness in time for the permanence of being. Nor is he fearful of the next moment, as destroying the permanence with it's change.  -Joey C.

-Pheonix

-One Head, Two Necks + Three Hands

Reject reality + substitute your own. 

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.  -Lao Tzu

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.  -John Lennon

Reality is a sliding door.  -R. Waldo Emerson

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.  -Albert Einstein

At some point down the street there lived a threesome of grown bros that were Civil War reenactment enthusiasts. As though it wasn’t good enough the first time around. They were the classic, happy, Santa/biker ZZ type, w/ a home full of dusty American antiques + a ready musket leaned near every window. no kidding. The booby trapped barb wired back acre was decorated w/ litter + half organized w/ destitute VW parts, (we where expecting?) W/in that motley pile + wonder weeds, there stood a heavy black cannon they fired off every Fourth of July.

i imagine other neighbors knew the date + time + moment of the annual explosion. On the expectation of it hurrying willy-nilly to hold down the urns + nic-nacs, keeping the piano in place as in the scene from Mary Poppins when Admiral Boom blasts the canon on-the-dot.

There were gun shots shuttering over Oakland that would ring every New Year. As though everyone let loose w/ a hidden weapon + then, once over + concealed again, eyed each other suspiciously from then on. Starting one minute till w/ the final sound-off at five minutes after midnight. i’m sure, since then, the Vulcan motley units have become rather gentrified to a degree. When we lived there the inhabitants were working artists + artistic spirit types converting it into the groovy space we are allegedly known to occupy. Yet, as time passed it was inevitably commandeered by the popular yuppies w/ bigger bank rolls + small children. We looked on their actions as the courtesy of patrons instead of a hostel takeover. Whoa, where have i gone...

Anyway, yes, New Years Eve at the Vulcan ... of course most of this was during my white-out phase so i could be way off in recall. Also what goes around, again, so it could be totally trashed + on it's way back up in repeat by now....hey, Mark you think your murals still grace the Vulcan Thai Café?

You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.  -Diane Arbus

The surface read is sometimes not the most interesting. Often it is our own subtext that is the best part of a story. But we need to be catapulted toward those inner comments.

Oh, for writing out loud!

second wind...
Nothing awakens the heart or stops it cold more than dirtying pages. To me, writing is much like gardening. Carrying my tools out, i turn to a place looking as though it needs a bit of tending to. i have a sit. Before long, using a word dragnet, i’ve raked in + set up a few pages, + weeded through verbosity.

i heard KR will be writing an autobiography. Good thing. I hope it’s full of lies. He’s one of my heroes.

116 Having just spied Keith Richards on the cover of the Rolling Stone, i ran back to the studio to ask who would go get it for me. Someone joked, It’s just like porn, after the first time you buy, it’s no big deal.

A kind soul left + came back with the tabloid. i ran into the oval office showing off the cover image. A universal grimace, Jayne, I just had lunch!

...the river is flowing, rolling and flowing. the river is flowing, down to the sea...

An elderly Tasha Tudor is wearing a hobo suit + babushka (she sewed) + is riding an oversize red tricycle (she painted) w/ a potato basket (she wove) filled w/ flowers (she grew) tied on the handle bars (she’s not holding on to because she's reading a book she wrote + illustrated) w/ handlebar tassels (she dyed). At that moment, i want to be her.

She points out one of the tacky black velvet painting in the book, Look how the black brings out the yellow.

Eager to impress her, i say, Oh, no, See how the black strangles the yellow + drags it out?

She smiles + politely asking me to leave her dream. 

Just because they are your personal hero doesn't mean you’d see eye to eye.